Google maps has come out with a new feature to help its users avoid crowds. The feature is called ‘Area Busyness,’ which will show the busiest areas in a city. The announcement about this new ‘Area Busyness’ feature by Google Maps was announced by Google from its blog post on November 16, 2021. It will help people avoid crowds and check if any part of the city has more than the usual number of footfalls. This new feature works for both Android and iOS devices. It will also work for areas that have cafes, restaurants, shops, museums and such other places. Users from India and around the World can use this feature. The busyness trends is based on the aggregated location history data that Google collects from people who have opted for it from their Google Account. That is how it calculates how busy a place typically is for every hour of the week.
Since the year 2016, this feature has been a part of Google Maps. The areas which are busy are labelled as ‘Busy area’ and users are able to find information about the current busyness of locations by tapping a particular place on the maps. The Google Support page tells that whenever any user opens this new feature app, Google Maps highlight when an area is near its busiest. When we tap on the ‘Busy area’; it will show us a chart highlighting how busy the area is at different times of day, along with a directory of restaurants, shops, and other recreational places like museums.
To protect users privacy, the system does not calculate busyness information for residential places like a house or apartment. The feature ‘Area busyness’ never reveals the exact location of an individual. Google uses an advanced technique called differential privacy to ensure that all data remains anonymous, safe and private. Google displays busyness for an entire, predefined “area of interest.” These areas never display exactly where a crowd is within it.
Also, this year Google introduced some indicators like displaying ‘Usually not too busy and ‘Usually as busy as it gets’ under location names. Google has now expanded its efforts towards that directly by starting to highlight busy areas directly on the virtual maps. The update also comes in between emergence of Omicron variant of COVID, due to which people stay indoors and avoid visiting crowded places. Google confirmed to Gadgets 360 that the Area Busyness feature is now rolling out to all users globally and India is a part of the rollout.
