NaviGadget

google navigation

Oct 29, 2009 gps navigation, phones, software

Google – the supreme being of the internets – just announced their new GPS navigation application which will cost nothing. It will come standard on the Android 2.0 OS. And soon it will probably be offered on Blackberry, WinMo, and one day even the iPhone.

Before we go into the details of Google’s new turn-by-turn GPS navigation application – we would like to ask you? What do you think this will do to standalone GPS makers? Or more importantly what will all these iPhone GPS apps will do once it hits the iPhone? Do you think the stock prices changes of TomTom and Garmin were because of Google’s announcement?

Anyways – officially called Google Maps Navigation – the new application is an internet connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance. It will be part of Google Maps Mobile and will is already available on phone with Android 2.0.

Some features include ability to search by business name, search by voice, traffic view, search along your route, satellite view, street view, and finally a car dock mode for devices which support it.

A question that comes to mind is how will will caching of maps along your route will work – so you don’t have to rely on a 3G network. Can you get directions from LA to NY and have all the maps downloaded before you leave the Pacific?

On a separate note I would personally like to thank Google for not using Starbucks as an example destination. Instead they used In-N-Out :)

Check out all the videos:

It is still in beta.