Immersive View
Google announced at I/O an update to Google Maps that would provide an immersive view of a city for route planning. It reminded me of one of the opening scenes of early 2000’s version of Spider Man or a commercial for Sim City 2000.
In other words… it’s very cool. The question that’s important: is it helpful?
It looks like it will be helpful for those who are already thoughtful and like to plan. In essence, the Google Engineer. That’s probably why so many people in the Google I/O audience applauded. It’s built for them.
The refrain on the show Shark Tank is that entrepreneurs build products to scratch their own itch. Things vex them and they want to change the world. The new immersive view gives me a 20% time vibe. That said, there are some feature’s that might be very helpful:
- Being able to create and export video from the tool for use in content creation
- Visualizing different routes at different times of day simultaneously to see which path wins
- Reviewing parking and other obstacles that one might encounter along the way
It’s OK for one to build for oneself. However, as a company, it’s probably better that there’s a market larger than one.
