Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/22/google_indoor_maps/
Plan your BLACK FRIDAY CHARGE: Google shop maps go desktop
Bags of smoke, loads of aggression, straight up the middle
Posted in Applications, 22nd November 2012 17:35 GMT
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Google Maps' indoor offerings - floor plans, often of shops or other public spaces, until now browsable on Android devices only - are now browsable in browsers too, so one can plan a day out down to the smallest detail.
Floorplans launched in America just over a year ago, and in the UK back in July [1], but only on Android devices on the (quite reasonable) grounds that it is when one is mobile that one needs indoor maps. This was a differentiator for Android too: but not any more, as now anyone with a decent web browser can get floorplans for more than 10,000 locations [2].
The maps only cover the most compliant of places: City Airport but not Heathrow, airports in Las Vegas but not in Los Angeles. Only sites which have delivered the data to the Googleplex themselves are included - there's no Streetview-like team team armed with 3D laser volume scanners yet, amusing as that would be.
Quite how useful internal mapping is - when GPS is unlikely to be working indoors - is debatable, but Google is clearly thinking ahead to a time when proper indoor location will be available. Next-generation systems such as the European Galileo have slightly better building penetration, and then there's the use of Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth unique device ID techniques and even clever use of white space systems.
Routine deployment of accurate indoor tracking is only a few years off at worst, so the time to gather the data is now. ®