If you saw a bunch of shoppers walking around on Black Friday with their heads in their smartphones (or worse, their tablets), there are two likely explanations: The first, and most probable, is that they were trying to find the most up-to-the-second deals on all sorts of different products during their day-long shopping spree. However, a few shoppers might have also been taking up Google on its brand-new implementation of a well-known feature. Specifically, Google’s recent introduction of its indoor maps – via Google Maps, of course – into the browser-accessible version of Google Maps.
If that sounds very specific, it’s because it is. We’ll explain. In November of last year, Google first introduced its “indoor maps” feature for Google Maps, which brought indoor floor plans for a variety of transit, cultural, and retail locations to Google Android users specifically. One year later, Google’s expanded the indoor maps feature to its standard Google Maps implementation on the Web.
“Before heading home for the holidays or out to shop on Black Friday, check out indoor maps of the airport or shopping mall on your desktop to better plan your trip. Simply zoom in on a building on Google Maps and you’ll automatically see a detailed floor plan with helpful labels for gates at the airport, stores within the mall, departments within a retail shop, as well as ATMs, restrooms and more,” described Google in a blog post last week.
According to Google, the company currently offers its indoor maps for more than 10,000 different locations across nine different countries. A list of supported places can be found on a related Google Support page.
While venues are free to submit the floor plans of their establishments to Google for inclusion in the indoor mapping feature, it’s unclear of just how long it might take for Google to import the plans into Google Maps.
“Google Maps Floor Plans is still in Beta. We’re still working out the kinks in how we process your floor plans, so right now we can’t give estimates on when your floor plans will appear in Google Maps for Android,” reads Google’s description on its Google Maps Floor Plans page.
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