Plus codes: redefining postal addresses

Google’s Plus Codes initiative to locate homes in rural India with no postal address is to be rolled out around the planet as an open system. In the image, the Plus Code of my office at IE Business School in Madrid: anyone, anywhere in the world, can enter that code, in upper or lower case, on Google Maps, and locate me.

Obviously, in the case of my address in the heart of the Spanish capital, using Google’s Open Code instead of the street name and a number makes little sense; but as the World Bank points out, half of the world’s population do not have an address as such, so the potential benefits are clear. Lacking a postal address means, in many cases denial of basic services such as postal mail, other types of deliveries, emergency services or registering to vote.

Google is offering the system for free and it can be integrated into applications. Plus Codes is based on the Open Location Codes or OLC, a geocoding system designed by engineers at Google’s Zurich offices and published on Github in 2014 under the Apache 2.0 license as an easier-to-use alternative to latitude and longitude coordinates. Plus Codes have been part of Google Maps since August 2015 and are displayed in a browser by adding the code after a bar to the address of the plus.codes page. The service requires a smartphone, something more and more of us around the world are now using…