Google Maps — The New Social Network?

Google stands to gain a lot from this move, but will it be at our expense?

As Google Maps introduces a new feature that enables you to create and share with others, a list of your favourite locations, we wonder if this a turning point (no pun intended) in Google Maps’ raison d’être (reason for existence).

This new feature is of course, a nice way to organise all your favourite restaurants, bars, museums, and coffee shops in one place. But, what makes it even more interesting is that you can also now follow your friend’s Google Maps lists, or send her your’s via text, email, messaging apps, or social media.

Aimed at making the mapping application more involved with your daily life (and not only for commutes), this makes the Maps application something you’d turn to more often (there we go again — no pun intended, again).

This change though small in technical terms, does provide Google new and potentially very lucrative avenue to know even more about you. But an important question arises: Is Google Maps trying to mimic a social network?

Waze was the first, and perhaps last well-known navigation service with a somewhat-social angle built into it, thanks to it’s crowdsourcing bedrock. Guess where Waze is now?

In Google. Entrenched deep within Google Maps.

Now, Google seems to be melting what it’s got from Waze and observed from Foursquare (later called Swarm) and creating a new work stream.

Google said that this new option will give users an easy way to share information, places, etc. with their friends. “Previously, people could ‘star’ places on Google Maps, but there was no way to organize that information or share those places with people”, Google spokeswoman Elizabeth Davidoff wrote in an email.

It is the ‘share’ part of this new roll out that reflects quite heavily in Google’s approach.
Google has been operating under the assumption for a while now that people want to use Maps for several reasons other than simply finding their way in an unknown area. This also reflects in the other recent features that they have added to Google Maps, including the ability to hail a cab ride from Uber or Lyft, or things like finding out if parking is an issue in an area you’re intending to visit.

This new move also raises an important question with respect to how people use Google Maps.

Google has done a great job by mapping pretty much the entire the world through labour-intensive efforts like Street View and crowdsourcing real-time traffic updates with Waze.
In addition they added popular locations, businesses, ratings, comments, photos, and other details that previously were exclusive to sites like Yelp.

This new move will not only allow users to personalise the data available on Google, but also to share this personalised data.

Things like finding out about traffic, or nearby restaurants, bars, petrol pumps, banks, etc., have been widely used Google Map features for a while now. They are features that are quite helpful, and user-friendly, but all of them follow a user-service approach, working towards finding information pertaining to the user’s need. This new feature, enabling people to share their Google Map lists, marks a change in this particular approach, not just helping users find what they need, but also enabling them to “share” in with others… Facebook much, Google?!

As we mention Facebook, we must not ignore another important angle to Google’s new move.

As is almost always the case, the trade-off with convenience is increased data collection. This new feature is quite obviously another way to collect information about users’ preferences and interests. Information of the kind, like where people went or where they want to go may, can be really valuable to advertisers, and it could easily be used to target customers more effectively.

So, Google Maps might be trying to mimic a social network, but with the ‘desired, friendly, and the popular’, also come concerning controversial features.

The new feature is available on Android and iOS starting this week.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.