A MAPS FOR MANY PLATFORMS
The new Google Maps is not just a new interface, though. There are some significant technological changes happening behind
the scenes to bring Google Maps into 2014. It’s faster, it’s 3-D, and it is designed from the ground up to handle any device
you can throw at it.
The old Google Maps displayed map information as a series of pre-rendered tiles, fit together so as to best represent the
location you were searching for. If you have ever played a game of Carcassonne, you’ve got the idea. The problem with
tiles, though, is that since they are pre-rendered, they need to be downloaded every time you refresh a map. This can result
in slower download times, especially in mobile devices. For the redesign, Google switched to vector-based maps. Instead of
downloading a series of pre-rendered images for each map, Google’s servers pass along a stream of data to the new Maps
that describes what a location should look like using points, lines, curves, and other geometric objects.
The evolution of Google Maps, from tiles to vectors.
Not only is the vector approach faster, but it is also truly 3-D (albeit, most of
the time, viewed from a two-dimensional perspective). This allows Google
to do things it could never do before, like incorporate Google Earth’s 3-D
view into Maps directly, without loading up an entirely separate app. This
shift to true 3-D, though, did have one casualty: a fake shadow on the
Google Maps pin.
EVENTUALLY, GOOGLE MAPS
MIGHT HAVE TO RUN ON
GLASS,
OR
EVEN
ON
A
SMARTWATCH.
“In the past, the perspective was a bit weird, because while you were always
viewing the map from above, a prominent branding element--which you
can still see even on the official app icons--was a fake shadow on the pin, set at a 45-degree angle,” Jones says. “In the new
Maps, that 45-degree shadow is discordant: because everything is now rendered in 3-D, we can now have real shadows on
all the buildings. So the fake shadow had to go. You wouldn’t believe how many discussions we had, just about dropping the
shadow from the pin.”
Finally, the new Google Maps was designed from the ground up to work well on everything, from smartphones to tablets to
PCs. In 2014, a responsive, scalable design that works everywhere might seem like a matter of course for a company like
Google, but Jones and