A look at how products are born at Google, and then a deep dive into what makes a product like Google Maps challenging.

1. Google Confidential and Proprietary 1
Products: How & Why
Pamela Fox
Developer Relations

2. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Organizing the world’s information and making it
universally accessible and useful
Google’s mission
This is our mission. We started with the goal of collecting all the web pages in the world and making them easy to sort through. But
after creating Google search, we soon discovered that there was a lot of other types of information in the world, and a lot of different
ways that we could be making that information accessible and useful.

3. Google Confidential and Proprietary
How?
Products!
So, we started creating more products, to deal with the plethora of information on the web. There are a couple ways that products
are “born” at Google.

4. Google Confidential and Proprietary
But How Are Products Born?
= Acquisition
One way is through acquisition. Google Maps was a product dreamed up by a handful of enterprising developers in Australia. They
made a prototype, pitched it to various companies, and when Larry and Sergey saw it, they thought it was a nice way to make
geographic information accessible.. And thus a Google product was born! (..adopted)

5. Google Confidential and Proprietary
But How Are Products Born?
= Local Need
Another reason products start is because of local need. In Australia, people have a particular love for searching real estate listings.
We noticed that people were typing housing queries into Google Maps here, and not getting many good results, so we decided we
should do something about it. Thus, the Google Real Estate Search project was born, and now fulfills a need in the AU market.

6. Google Confidential and Proprietary
But How Are Products Born?
= Feature Parity
Sometimes products are created because we need them to compete. At Google, we value competition because it makes us work
harder. When we came out with Gmail, we noticed other popular email systems had calendars. So we created Google Calendar,
and made our offering to users much more compelling.

7. Google Confidential and Proprietary
But How Are Products Born?
= An Idea
Sometimes we just think a product is a good idea. At Google, we already have many tools for communication and collaboration:
Google docs, Google sites, Gmail, Blogger, etc. But when Lars & Jens (also the creators of Google Maps) proposed Google Wave
to Larry and Sergey, they gave them the go-ahead. There are times when we need to experiment with new ideas, even if they’re not
necessary or competitive, and hope that they make a revolutionary impact on our total offering.

8. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Deep Dive: Google Maps
We have a lot of products. And we have a lot of Googlers. That’s because there are a lot of problems to tackle on any given product,
and we love tackling problems. (That’s what engineering is!) So, let’s do a deep dive on Google Maps, and what makes it hard.

9. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Product
Released in February 2005.
One of the first AJAX apps and
"slippy maps" implementations.
Features:
Searches:
• Addresses
• Local businesses
• User content
Driving Directions (Transit too)
Traffic Overlay
Street View
KML/GeoRSS Browsing
My Maps
Mapplets
Many people think of Google Maps as just a way to find an address or directions, but it actually offers a lot more than that –
transit/walking directions, real-time traffic, streetview, user-created maps, photo layers, and more.

10. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
But let’s start with the most basic aspect of Google Maps – the road map tiles. When you create roadmap tiles, you are figuring out
how to represent a mass of labels, lines, and shapes at various zoom levels. You need to figure out what is the most important label
to show, and how to arrange labels so that they don’t overlap and visually overwhelm. This isn’t trivial.

11. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
Now, it’s not too hard when you’re creating maps for just one part of the world. But one of the things that makes Google Maps (and
any Google product) so complex is that is an international product, and must cater to users everywhere. So, for example, we have to
decide how to show labels of places in foreign character sets, and decide whether to use a user’s current IP location to affect the
language of the tiles. In the case of Japan, we show both character sets, and manage to squash it all in.

12. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
There are even more differences when you zoom in to another country, because every country has its own way of getting around
and understanding maps. In Japan, they use 7/11 and MacDonalds as landmarks for navigation, so those icons are rendered
prominently on the maps. Another difference is in the icons used for things like churches, hospitals, and hotels. In the US, we simply
use a steeple as a church. In Japan, we would need to use separate temple and shrine icons to be understandable.

13. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
Now, let’s look at problems with satellite tiles – the imagery that we get from satellites orbiting the earth. First of all, there aren’t
enough satellites orbiting everywhere to get real-time data for the whole earth. In fact, much of our imagery can be a year or more
old. Right now, we’re standing in a new building.. so new that it appears like a concrete block in the imagery on Maps. 

14. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
Sometimes, we do get more up-to-date imagery, but it’s just not great quality. The resolution might be low, or it might be covered in
clouds. As much as we beg, we just can’t get clouds to get out of the way when we photograph! So, whenever we get new imagery
for an area, we have to carefully analyze its quality and decide whether we should replace the current imagery.

15. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
And sometimes we have to make the decision to use different imagery for two regions that are near to eachother. For example,
whenever land meets ocean, we fade between high resolution beach imagery and a very blurry blue – there’s no point in storing high
resolution imagery of a bunch of ripples over 70% of the world. In some cases, we use different imagery in the same landmass, and
that can sometimes lead to quite a mismatch, as shown above. We haven’t entirely solved this blending and choosing problem.

16. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Tiles
Now, after we’ve perfected our road map tiles and satellite tiles, we need to get them to align for our “hybrid” view. That means that
even teeny inconsequential country roads need to match up. Considering the vector road data comes from a different source than
the satellite imagery, they can be hard to align together.

17. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Searches
"Wellington Hotel, 871 Seventh Ave. @55th St, 55 Street, New York"
Moving on from the tiles to the searches that you do on top of them. Our search box has to interpret a lot, without much help from
the user. It doesn’t make you specify whether you’re looking for addresses or for business, it doesn’t make you specify the country of
the thing you’re looking for. It just takes strings from users all over the world, and tries to figure out what the heck they’re looking for.
And, wow, addresses can be complex. The example above specifies 3 streets, a business name, and a region name that might be a
city or might be a state – and the search engine has to disambiguate all of that.

18. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Directions
Driving directions are even harder than searches, because we have to figure out where the first location is, figure out where the
second one is, and then find the best route between them. That usually means trying to spend the most amount of time on big roads
with higher speed limits, but it also means balancing traffic at different times of day. And sometimes it means kayaking across the
ocean with a pit stop in Hawaii. 

19. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Directions
Driving directions get even harder when you’re giving them for a country that doesn’t name most of it’s streets. Imagine having to tell
someone how to get from “Unknown Rd” to “Unknown Rd”. It’s not easy.

20. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Directions
And then we have the non-driving directions, like walking. These are hard to calculate because most of the data out there is geared
towards drivers, and few data sources specify walkable paths. Google Maps still hasn’t figured out my optimal commute, which goes
through a underground subway path, a parking lot walkway, and a mall. We still need to find ways to source better walking data.

21. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Data
To search for places and to calculate directions, we need a lot of underlying data, which we get from various data sources. But, the
world is a massive place, and is constantly under construction, and there will always be inaccuracies in data. So, we needed to find
a *scalable* way to get users to tell us when data was wrong. Instead of having each user painstakingly email us with each problem,
we actually have them fix the problem themselves, on the map. Of course, we have to engineer moderation and anti-spam
mechanisms, but we still get a lot better data feedback with an instant user feedback system.

22. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Data
But, there are some issues with letting anyone edit the map, because there is the notion of an “owner” for business results. Should
any old schmoe be allowed to edit the Casino’s location? Shouldn’t we only let the owner do it? Well, how do we know who the
owner is? We usually send them a postcard with a code at their address. But what happens if the owner leaves, but never tells us
that? What if he dies? (Or something less morbid but equally bewildering). These are all interesting issues we face.

23. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Real-time Data
So far, all the data I’ve shown is data that we update once a year, once a month, etc. But there’s some data on our maps that’s real-
time – constantly updated – the traffic layer. To have this layer, we needed to build systems that can take in data from traffic data
providers all over the world in a consistent format, and turn that into visual layers for users, and do it all in a matter of minutes.

24. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Privacy
So, as you’ve seen, we have *a lot* of data. Sometimes, the amount of data we have can be scary for users. For instance, our
StreetView imagery lets you view buildings and streets before you visit them. But as a side effect, it lets you view people on the
street. So, to make users feel comfortable with this technology, we needed to build technology to detect faces and to blur them. It’s
not easy – at the beginning, we were confusing quite a few horse butts with faces. The horses probably didn’t mind much, but we
have since improved the face detection to leave them out of it. 

25. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Hard Parts: Storage
Tiles, Data, Images
All the tiles and data add up to a lot of storage on our servers. Our tiles are basically an image pyramid, where each tile on a zoom
level splits into 4 more on the next zoom level, and since we go up to 21 zoom levels in some places, that means a massive number
of tiles (see the table above). Plus, we have 4 different map types, so it’s really 4 times a massive number. And then of course,
there’s all the data for searching and directions. Google is one of the few companies that could possibly store this amount of data,
as well as replicate it efficiently for serving users.

26. Google Confidential and Proprietary
Google Maps: The Team
Legal
Business
Engineering
Product
Management
Marketing
User
Support
As you can see, Google Maps is a fairly complex product. It requires a lot of people working together across multiple disciplines to
collect data, discover data privacy laws, engineer systems, lead teams, and of course, get people to use the product, and support
them when they do. But there’s one common theme across these roles: everyone loves solving problems, and fulfilling our mission.

27. Google Confidential and Proprietary