ISSUE 50 • ANDROID ADVISOR 27GOOGLE I/O 2018Picking a restaurant to hang out at socially can
be difficult even with the power of personalized
recommendations. Google Maps is gaining a ‘Shortlist’
feature that lets you select a handful of businesses
to share with your friends to help narrow down the
selection, eliminating the need to pass around links in
a group text. Your pals can add recommendations of
their own and vote for which place they want to visit.
To make things even more personal, Google
Assistant is bringing its AI smarts to Maps later
this summer.
Finally, Google also teased a potential future
feature that taps into your phone’s camera to
drastically change how the walking directions
function. Blending ‘computer vision’ with machine
learning from the cloud transforms Maps into a Street
View-like augmented reality experience. Holding up
your camera still show a tiny sliver of the map (as you
can see in the screenshot on page 8), but also the
world around you – and the world is overlaid with
visual directions to your destination, as well as pop-
up cards displaying info of any businesses you pass.
You might even be able to add a virtual guide to your
destination (a fox, in Google’s demonstration).
Think of the new on-foot interface for Google
Maps like a supremely handy Frankensteinian mash-up
of Google Lens and Google Daydream. The company
didn’t announce any firm plans for the AR revamp’s
rollout, but we can’t wait to get out hands on it –
assuming this augmented reality vision becomes
actual reality one day, that is.