Google Map Maker edit tools extended to cover the UK

 

Google is expanding its Map Maker edit tools to the UK.

The browser-based software allows users to add details about buildings, hiking trails, vegetation and other features to its maps of the country.

Suggested additions and amendments are reviewed by other users and the firm's own staff before going live.

The move comes at a time when Apple, Nokia and others are investing heavily in rival "free-to-use" mapping technologies.

Experts suggest the rise of GPS-enabled devices means the efforts could hold the key to future profits if the firms add location-triggered adverts or use the data to promote situation-specific services.

But for now they see little or no financial return from their current smartphone map apps beyond the value added to their brands.

Codebreaking cartographers

Google first launched its Map Maker service in 2008 to allow users to help it add details to its maps of Pakistan, Vietnam and just over a dozen other countries.

It allowed the firm to fill in blanks to the third-party data it had licensed at a time when its own cartographers were focused on other territories.

The company later extended the facility to much of the rest of the world including the US, France and Australia - countries where it also uses sensor-equipped cars to collect mapping data.

Google said there were "technical obstacles to overcome" when merging any of its existing data with Map Maker, helping explain why it had taken until now to bring it to the UK.

Ahead of the launch workers at Bletchley Park - the site of Britain's World War II codebreaking efforts - trialled the software to help promote the roll-out. The search giant had previously donated money towards the estate's restoration fund.