Google Geo Developers Blog: November 2014

Localization of Street Addresses in the Google Maps APIs

Thursday, November 20, 2014

The Google Maps APIs have been making maps universally accessible to developers and users for over 10 years. With over 50 supported languages, almost everyone can view the map in their own language.

But sometimes an address translated to your language isn’t the most useful result. Whether your map says London, Londres, Лондон or 伦敦, only the first of these will match local street signs or help you communicate the address to locals.

If you view geocoded addresses in locations with different local languages, today we launched a change that will make life easier for you. Street-level addresses returned by the Google Maps Geocoding API now favor the local language, while keeping the address understandable as much as possible for both a user who only reads the requested language as well as locals.

If the local language and user language both use the same alphabet, the Geocoding API will now return the local names for the streets and localities. For example, searching for an address in Brazil with user language set to English now returns “Avenida Paulista” rather than “Paulista Avenue”.

If the local language and user language use different alphabets, the Geocoding API will return the local name, transliterated into the Latin alphabet. In some cases, an English translation may be returned, for example if no transliteration is available. For example, searching for El Tahrir Square with user language set to Japanese now returns “El-Tahrir Square, Ismailia, Qasr an Nile, Cairo Governorate, エジプト” rather than “エジプトカイロ県 Qasr an Nile, タハリール広場” (the old result) or “ميدان التحرير، قصر النيل، محافظة القاهرة‬، مصر” (the local name). The Latin result is more likely to be readable by both a Japanese traveler and an Egyptian local, whereas the Japanese traveler is unlikely to be able to read the Arabic address, and Egyptian locals are unlikely to be able to read the Japanese characters.

Queries where the requested language is the same as the local language are unaffected. Note that the requested language can be specified either using the language= parameter, or the browser’s Accept-Language header. If neither of these is provided, the native language of the Google domain is used as a default (for example, English for maps.googleapis.com).

This change also applies to addresses returned by the Directions API and Distance Matrix API, as well as services in the Google Maps JavaScript API v3. The Places API is not included at this time.

To learn more about localization in the Google Maps APIs, see the Google Maps JavaScript API v3 documentation. To learn more about the Geocoding API, see the Geocoding API documentation.

Posted by Elena Kelareva, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

Introducing Street View and Photo Spheres in the Maps Embed API

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

releasedGoogle Maps Embed APIStreet View ServiceGoogle Maps Embed APIPosted by Ken Hoetmer, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

Google Play services 6.5

Monday, November 17, 2014

Cross-posted from Google Developers Blog
Posted by Ian Lake, Developer Advocate Google Maps

My LocationgetMapAsync(OnMapReadyCallback)MapFragmentMapViewgetMap() Drive Google Wallet Google Fitofficially releasedsessions Granular Dependency Management SDK Coming Soon!Google Play Services section on the Android Developer site

A few updates to the Google Maps / Google Earth APIs Terms of Service

Friday, November 14, 2014

Today we posted a few minor updates to the Google Maps / Google Earth APIs Terms of Service. These changes should impact very few developers and customers, but are designed to provide clarification for recently launched advertising-supported and connected APIs.
The changes are broadly as follows:
Advertising

Similar to the Adsense Terms and Conditions, if you use an API that serves ads, you grant Google the right to index your site for the purpose of better ad targeting.

A restriction on using Places API results to create or augment an advertising product.

Sign-in and cookies

A restriction on obscuring the Google sign-in button, similar to the existing restriction on obscuring the Google logo and copyright notice.

A clause that states certain APIs use cookies, and that developers using these APIs may be required by law to disclose such on their own site.

Other changes

Clarifications on what sorts of use cases constitute asset tracking.

Removal of references to specific data providers.

We continue to believe in providing a set of tools that help you meet your maps and location related goals, and these updates are designed to make the terms of our offering more clear and sustainable. We look forward to seeing what you build next!
Posted by Ken Hoetmer, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

Maps APIs Blog

Localization of Street Addresses in the Google Maps APIs

Introducing Street View and Photo Spheres in the Maps Embed API

Google Play services 6.5

A few updates to the Google Maps / Google Earth APIs Terms of Service

Labels

Archive

Feed

Company-wide

Products

Developers