Google Maps to help users to save, share their location’s plus codes

Google on Thursday announced the launch of an India-first feature on Google Maps where users can access their current location to find the ‘plus codes’ address for their home.

Plus codes are free, open-sourced, digital addresses that provide accurate addresses for locations, including for places that don’t have accurate formal addresses.

Instead of street and locality names, plus codes are based on latitude and longitude and are displayed as a short sequence of numbers and letters, providing accuracy right up to the doorstep and ease the discovery of and navigation to businesses.

Since its launch in 2018, plus codes have been adopted at scale by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India and governments.

”In addition to community-led efforts, we are also committed to empowering users to directly use ‘plus code’ addresses for their daily needs.

”We piloted this feature in India a month ago, and are thrilled to share that over three lakh users in India have already found their home’s address using plus codes,” Google Maps Product Manager Amanda Bishop said.

Bishop added that the company is actively looking for opportunities to partner with e-commerce, logistics and delivery companies to scale up the experience to more people across the world.

When saving a ‘Home’ location on Google Maps, users in India will see a new ‘Use your current location’ that uses their phone’s location to generate a plus code (if the location precision meets minimum thresholds) that they can then use as their Home address.

There is also a new section at the top of the ‘Saved’ tab to make it easier to retrieve, copy and share these home addresses.

Currently, the feature is available on Android only with iOS to follow soon, the statement said.