Google Maps brings 'Plus Codes' to India

The brand new feature was unveiled yesterday at a Google event in New Delhi. According to Suren Ruhela, Director, Google Maps Next Billion User, the number of people using Google Maps in the country has doubled in the past couple of years.  

According to reports, the new feature aims to make address search, navigation easy on Maps. Google is also adding voice navigation search in six additional Indian languages — Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam — on the Android app. Voice navigation was introduced in Hindi close to three years back. 

The event saw the launch of Plus Codes -- an open source solution that represents a simple and consistent addressing system. The feature lets a user zero in on an area based on the Plus Code provided by a user. 

"Any location in the world can be uniquely described by a six character code and if you can add to it the name of the city then it becomes very easy to understand and share," Ruhela noted.  

An 'Add Address' feature was also introduced which is aimed at facilitating easy searching on maps.