Google is opening its Map Maker for input from the public, riding the trend towards crowd-sourced input for improving products.
The project plays into people's growing interest in location data and, following the Wikipedia model, people's desire to contribute to a communal resource. It's a trend that's particularly useful for applications that benefit from more fine-grained information than any centralized source could provide.
Other examples include Yelp and its business reviewing competitors, and the endless list of community bargain services that rely on users to submit local deals.
Google's own location-based reviews and recommendation services, Places, could benefit from user-generated data, of course. The program could also give local advertising a boost by giving business owners control of what appears on local maps or more finely tune context-aware ads that appear when maps are pulled up.
Since its release in 2008, Google Map Maker has doubled the number of neighborhood maps around the globe, giving definition to lesser known locales.
For now, Map Maker can only be used through a browser, but sources suggest a mobile version will be released soon, which could encourage more users to contribute. Also, building interiors aren't yet included as part of this release, but may be in the future.
Google Map Maker requires Internet Explorer 7.0 Firefox 3.6, Safari 3.1 or Google Chrome.
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