The world’s most widely used map and navigation application will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Saturday.
Google Maps Nokia’s phone in 2007. On the right Google’s first Street View shooting car. Google
The Google Maps map service was released on February 8, 2005. Its idea at that time was very much the same as today; To help people get from a place A to B.
However, at the time of publication, the service was very different from today. First of all, it only worked online and was not yet available for cell phones.
This is what Google Maps looked like when it was released in 2005. Google
In 2007 Larry Pageone of the founders of Google, suggested combining photos taken from the car with a map service. Since then, over the years, over 20 million kilometers of roads have been photographed for a feature called Street View.
The popularity of Google Maps’s mobile version began in 2009 as the so -called Turn by Turn navigation or GPS based on real -time route guidelines.
The Washington Post In 2020, more than a billion people are used by Google’s map service. At that time, its market share was over 80 %.
Next – but far behind – comes the Apple map service with a over 10 % market share. Wazella also has its own solid supporters.