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Google Maps has launched a new developer solution to deal with ride and delivery companies. As reported by Tech Crunch, this ties together some of the platform’s existing capabilities with a host of new features.
Google Maps has been hard at work over the last few weeks and months with a number of new features. A lot of these have concerned the Coronavirus pandemic with Maps coming to the forefront of helping users stay safe.
For example, Google Maps now provides local Covid-19 statistics across the U.S. with plans to expand across Europe. Maps has also introduced a new feature which shows you how busy public transport is so you can avoid crowds.
Google Maps has long been adding bits of functionality to help with ride and deliveries businesses. However, this new solution looks to bring a lot of that functionality together with some new features. Hopefully, this should make the user experience in this area much more pleasurable.
Google Maps finds solution for Ride and Deliveries companies
Back in 2018, Google launched its first in-app navigation for ridesharing companies. However, the company has placed more focus on this industry given how much it has boomed during the pandemic.
Google claims that this “on-demand Rides & Deliveries solution helps businesses improve operations as well as transform the driver and customer journey”. At its core, this new system is the routing service which developers can tweak for deliveries by bike or motorcycle, for example.
This should allow drivers to find the most optimal route and also enable a feature for arrival time predictions. This is designed for time-sensitive deliveries and pricing estimates.
Google has also introduced a “Nearby Drivers” feature. This allows users to find the closest driver with a single API call. Users can also add custom rankings and filters to ensure the right drive matches to the right journey.
It is not surprising that the app supports in-app navigation. It also allows developers to easily integrate Google’s real-time trip and order progress capabilities. The company claim this will “keep customers informed from pickup to drop-off or delivery, with a real-time view of a driver’s current position, route, and ETA”.
Ultimately, most of us would expect these features as standard from the big ride and delivery companies. However, the technology is far from that simple and these companies have invested a lot of money in building these sorts of tech solutions.
As a result, do not expect andy of the big players to switch over to this platform. However, this may give some of the smaller companies to compete on a customer service level without having to invest quite so much.