Ask Maps, powered by Google's Gemini models, allows users to pose complex, natural-language queries, such as finding a public tennis court with lights available that evening, or locating a phone-charging station without a long queue, and receive curated answers drawn from information on more than 300 million places. Results are personalized based on a user's search and save history within the app. Users can book restaurant reservations, save locations, and begin navigation directly from within the conversational interface. The feature is rolling out immediately in the United States and India on Android and iOS, with a desktop version to follow.
The community powering those recommendations numbers more than 500 million contributors, who collectively submit more than 10 million real-time road disruption reports daily.
The second feature, Immersive Navigation, replaces the existing driving view with a vivid 3D rendering of a user's surroundings, including buildings, overpasses, and terrain. The system uses Gemini models to analyze Street View imagery and aerial photography in order to surface landmarks, lane markings, crosswalks, traffic lights, and stop signs at critical decision points. Voice guidance has also been revised to deliver more conversational, contextual instructions.
Additional capabilities include tradeoff alerts for alternate routes, weighing factors such as tolls against traffic delays, real-time notifications for road construction and crashes, and destination previews that identify building entrances and nearby parking. Maps processes more than five million traffic updates per second globally.
Immersive Navigation begins rolling out immediately in the United States, with expansion planned to eligible iOS and Android devices, CarPlay, Android Auto, and cars with Google built-in.
The announcement was made by Miriam Daniel, Google's Vice President and General Manager of Maps.
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