Google Maps Style Improvements

Google Maps has become the standard for mapping in the last few years. Their maps are accessed by people all across the globe for accurate and up to date maps of the world.

The recent 2011 update is compared to 2009 on Google's Lat Long blog, the images are below.

New York is a good demonstration of how the map is easier to read as the main roads are shown narrower.

This is most dramatic change is in Sydney, where there is a large concentration of main roads. The colours used in the map are toned down, and as a result more information can be displayed. This increases as you zoom in, where labels appear and are resized at every zoom level. The images below show London's South Bank.

And zoomed in London South Bank University shows the names of individual buildings. Try it yourself in the embedded map below.

View Larger Map

So how did an internet search engine become so dominant in the world of cartography?

Google's mapping service maps.google.com and accompnaying free program Google Earth was released in 2005. It is easy to use and has allowed a generation of people to peer at their own house from satellite photographs. It now covers the whole world, and includes a huge wealth of data sets. They also provide accurate and reliable direction data.

Goggle do not maintain their products, they continuously development them. This leads some Google products to fall by the way side (e.g. Google Wave, Google Buzz) whilst the service is evolving into a better all round user experience (Google+). Google Maps is no different. They incrementally tweak the maps style to become more focused and user friendly. They also keep them unto date following changes to land usage and road networks.

Google Maps is included on all Android Smartphones and is the backbone of the Maps app which is preinstalled on every iOS device. Google Earth is an optional download for iOS users.