It might be because Streetview needs a little positive advocacy these days, but the Google Maps team released a note on their blog about a new feature that leverages Streeview to display the image of a business on a map:

We use the position of the business on the map to approximately display it as a 3D marker in Street View. We are continuously working on improving the quality of the underlying map, and this will result in more and more businesses being positioned with high accuracy in Street View over time.

In other words, it’s not very precise. But it sounds pretty fun! Just have a look at the quick demo below to see how it works:

This looks pretty good, and it could be really useful on my cell phone. Unfortunately, I tried it on my Android and the same feature wasn’t there. Too bad, I could use this business-spotter when I find myself in unknown neighborhoods.

It is interesting to be a spectator of how Google pioneers augmented reality solutions for businesses. As mentioned above, the technology is somewhat clunky for the time being, but it clearly exemplifies Google Maps’ goal to own the virtual reality space, and sell it back to local businesses. I wonder if a business with no marketing budget for Google Maps will end up dying, given that our phones will become the best way for us to know where to go.

It makes little doubt today that Google is the most universalist company of the twenty-first century:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.(From Google Corporate Site)

Google-owned Blogger just celebrated its 10 years anniversary, and focused their communications on the 300 millions blogs created. As of today, Google can translate 50+ different languages into your own. On Youtube, if you submit captions with your video, then foreign viewers can watch your video in 50+ languages instantly. Google is literally cracking open the Tower of Babel dilemma, by offering a technology that offers one universal language. Is Google better than Jesus?

Maybe not so. Google has one huge problem: its Maps! Maps is Google’s most beautiful product, but it is also the most problematic, because it pushes the search company to get into the muddy waters of geopolitics.

Recently, Switzerland asked Google to take away Streetview from Switzerland’s Google Maps. The neutral central-European country explains that despite Google’s responsiveness for Streetview’s users’ complaints, the privacy of its citizens is too much at stakes.

You can get more details about this news in this Information Week article. To emphasize on Google’s problems with Streetview in general, writer Thomas Claburn provides other examples where Google Maps’ technology failed when applied in different cultures. For example:

Street View has also met resistance in Japan. Google was asked to re-shoot Street View images in twelve Japanese cities using cameras positioned lower to the ground, to avoid photographing over the fences protecting people’s yards.

Wow, couldn’t they figure that out before shooting every street corners of Japan?

There are a lot of green social networks out there: Care2, Greenwala, Gaia, Greenvoice… They all offer excellent social networking tools to encourage greener lifestyles through mutual help. One of those Websites, MakeMeSustainable, created a little Google Maps mashup to enable users to mark green businesses on a map. As a user registered in San Francisco, when I open this page, it suggests green locations in my area. When maps appear in the context of a social network, they always feel more consumer-friendly (because specific to a center of interest).

Up the green mapping alley, there is a much more impressive player in the field: Open Green Map.

Open Green Map leverages the collaborative intelligence behind social technologies to provide a comprehensive geo-located resource to find green sites, wherever you are! So far, volunteering contributors have created more than 350 maps in over 50 countries. I find their tagline ‘Directions to a sustainable future’ wittingly appropriate.

As of today, the most interesting way to engage with Open Green Map is to explore their maps. There are two features that the Open Green Map team built on top of the Google Maps API that I really liked:

1. First, maps appearing in an expanded marker’s window all have the background template of OpenGreenMap.org. In terms of maps’ marketing and branding, this is very smart and well-executed.

2. In the right sidebar, you have a small window that contains info about the map, about the map creators, and a search box to look for a specific keyword in the sites marked on the map. I have looked for this feature on Google Maps, and am pretty sure it doesn’t exist. This is some untapped search activity that Google is missing, but that Open Green Map nailed perfectly.

Open Green Map is a long way from becoming a complete resource. Also, as it will grow in popularity, I’d like to see how they will control the ‘green’ label users are applying to the sites they contribute to the system. There is still a lot of clutter, mainly when it comes to creating a map (I just couldn’t access this feature). It seems like you can share documents (hosted on Slideshare) about a list of companies, but I am not sure what it is for. Building a green geo-platform is an excellent idea that will hopefully help millions find their green paths (and may it not become a leftout project).

Yesterday, the Google geo development team released the Latitude GeoRSS feed into the wild through an API. I find it surprising that Google is opening up its users’ geo-data this fast. Here’s why:

In this very young geo-location space, Google is taking a major lead with Android. It turns them into one of the rare Web-based service that tracks directly users’ location. Android’s numbers aren’t tearing the roof off, but they are not bad either: In March, AdMob reported that Android phones experienced a 44% monthly growth are in the first months after launch, while the iPhone got a 88% monthly growth rate (however, I would like to compare the marketing spend of both companies for the launch, Apple obviously had more buzz).

The reason this is an advantage for Google is mobile advertising. The Web on mobile will probably become the most profitable advertising channel for brands and local advertisers alike. A plethora of ad networks are popping up in this space. However, while focusing on serving ads, those ad networks will have to buy the geo-data juice from data providers… Like Google: Latitude encourages mobile users’ to share their location voluntarily and regularly. Payday!

So why is Google releasing its geo-juice so fast?

We have tried to make this process as easy as possible, but we realize there is an entirely different set of people (you guys, the developers!) that want to do more interesting things with their location.

In other words, they are creating a developers’ ecosystem around their geo-data center, which creates many benefits:
- Start developing geo-advertising solutions on Google’s platform
- Develop good ideas for Adwords to integrate later
- Maybe develop an economy around Latitude (and Android?)
- Pioneer to become a leading geo data provider.

However, Google’s Achille’s heel in this story is its social networking potential: It’s close to being null. On Google, you search, you create documents, you watch videos, but Google doesn’t connect you with your close ones the way Facebook does. Their social graph algo is known to be a bit screwy. So they will need the help of somebody else to capture our location while we socialize on the go.

I have enabled the ’share your location publicly’. I don’t find it scary. I have the feeling that nobody really cares where I am anyway (except advertisers). And it’s not that accurate anyway. But I really like updating my gtalk with my location. Geekilicious!

This is what we keep writing about over an over: mapped business are top-ranked. The reason is not that being on a map is cuter than simply having a Website. Nor is it that geographers are really influential people.

The Web was born world wide, aka any info anywhere retrievable and displayable in front of your eyeballs. Google broke through and became the leader in the search space simply because it was the best at making sense out of this mass of content. In its quest for better search, Google realized that while it was cool to search the world wide web for content, people were intuitively more interested in what was around them (in most cases). More specifically, they want to have more info about the thing that surrounds them.

Hence Google’s focus on geo-technologies and location-aware devices. We often blog about Google’s obsession for geo-related info, because our product helps you be part of this game.

Today, another milestone is being reached, with Google announcing that they will now suggest businesses around your search query on top of their results page, even if there is no location specified in your search query:

We like to make search as easy as we can, so we’ve just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location. When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you.

Google will mainly base its geo-targeted results in your IP address to determine your location, but they also have other tools to know where you are, like Gears, Chrome, and maybe partnerships with live web services that specialize in tracking where you are and what you do.

Since the launch of Android-powered phones, Google has been active in releasing geolocation-related features. Last week, we covered the launch of Latitude, the service from the Mountain View-based search engine that lets you share your “exact” location with your friends on the spot. This week (Thursday to be precise), Google released My Tracks, a new application that enables users to easily share their outdoor activities with others.

From the official Google Blog:

My Tracks records tracks of outdoor activities using the phone’s built-in GPS. It shows these tracks on a map and presents live statistics, including an elevation profile. And here’s the best part: it lets you easily share your activities with friends and the world using Google Maps, as well as archive your training history with Google Docs.

(the Google Latlong blog also covers the launch)

Where Latitude received mixed reactions from the blogosphere for being a creepy app, My Tracks comes to the rescue to show how useful and fun geo-tracking can actually be. My Tracks is not pioneering this GPS application: hem, Map My Tracks is another independent application that does about the same, except that their app can be installed on over 100 different Web-enabled phones.

Stephen Shankland from Cnet tested the new app. He identified two main glitches with My Tracks: First, enabling GPS tracking on the G1 is extremely battery-consuming, where a Garmin device will last two days on two AA batteries. Second, it seems like Google isn’t accurate enough with its GPS tracking technology yet: altitude is never accurate, and you’re lucky if the marker of yourself on the map doesn’t put you 20 feet (or more) from where you actually are. On the good side of things, Stephen Shankland appreciated the sharing features associated with the app:

The ability to Twitter and e-mail links to maps is nice, and I e-mailed myself the KML file of my trip with no trouble, letting me view it in Google Earth at my leisure.

There are ups and down to Google’s new app. Nonetheless, what we are seeing here is the integration of geolocation technologies settling in our daily lives at the speed of light. Most people still don’t see how this technology applies to their daily needs, but faster then they will know, the technology will be embedded in their phones, and will become a main component of their daily activities! And once again, the businesses that did not ignore their geo-marketing potential will live happily ever after!