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Get up close and personal with sea turtles at Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef

Starting today, you can use Google Maps to find a sea turtle swimming among a school of fish, follow a manta ray and experience the reef at sunset—just as I did on my first dive in the Great Barrier Reef last year. You can also find out much more about this reef via the World Wonders Project, a website that brings modern and ancient world heritage sites online.

At Apo Island, a volcanic island and marine reserve in the Philippines, you can see an ancient boulder coral, which may be several hundred years old. And in the middle of the Pacific, in Hawaii, you can join snorkelers in Oahu’s Hanauma Bay and drift over the vast coral reef at Maui's Molokini crater.



We’re partnering with The Catlin Seaview Survey, a major scientific study of the world’s reefs, to make these amazing images available to millions of people through the Street View feature of Google Maps. The Catlin Seaview Survey used a specially designed underwater camera, the SVII, to capture these photos.


The Catlin Seaview Survey team on location on the Great Barrier Reef, encountering a manta ray

Whether you’re a marine biologist, an avid scuba diver or a landlocked landlubber, we encourage you to dive in and explore the ocean with Google Maps. Check out our complete underwater collection, featuring a Google+ underwater Hangout from the Great Barrier Reef. And you can always explore more imagery from around the world by visiting maps.google.com/streetview.

Explore more underwater images

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth (and snorkeling enthusiast)

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)
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Google News today

As we have scaled the service internationally, we have added new features (Local News, Personalization, Editors’ Picks, Spotlight, Authorship, Social Discussions), evolved our design, embraced mobile and run ancillary experiments (Fast Flip, Living Stories, Timeline). In parallel, we have monitored our quality and challenged our engineers to improve the technology under the hood—increase freshness, group news better, rank stories more accurately, personalize with more insight and streamline the infrastructure.

Take a look back at the past decade in Google News through the top stories from each year and a few notable features that have launched in the interim:



It’s undeniable that the online news landscape has changed immensely. Smartphones and social networks have transformed how news is accessed and sourced, and shifted the relationship between readers and authors. Open journalism is the norm, and aggregation by humans and machines is an integral part of the ecosystem. New technologies such as Hangouts on Air have the potential to connect users, journalists and opinion makers and transform how stories are discussed.

Opportunities abound, and we are excited for where we can take this product in the next decade. While change is inevitable, one thing remains the same: our mission is to bring you the news you want, when you need it, from a diverse set of sources.

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Scientist and Founder, Google News

(Cross-posted on the Google News blog)
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Together, we’ll be holding a series of Hangouts on Google+ designed to enable dialogue between Israeli Arab and Jewish students. “Hanging Out for Peace” is a six-month project that will involve nearly 150 Israeli university students, women and men, with an equal number of Arabs and Jews. Students will be divided into mixed Jewish and Arab ‘circles’, matched with other students who study the same subject at university.

The circles will meet via Hangouts on Google+, led by instructors from the Peres Center, and will undertake online and offline projects related to the circle’s area of academic focus. After a series of Hangouts, the students will meet face to face, present the projects they’ve developed to the larger group of participants and discuss issues that arose during their work together.

The Internet provides a perfect platform for dialogue and cooperation. It can help overcome physical barriers and connect people from different cultures who have shared interests and common values. We’re excited to see how this project develops and hope that, in a small way, it will help foster coexistence and understanding between Israeli Jews and Arabs and, in the future, build bridges between other communities, too.

Posted by Doron Avni, Head of Policy, Israel

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Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google Enterprise Blog.)
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North Americans sought out the best local beaches to help cool off from the summer heat. In comparison, many more people from Spain, Italy and France searched for community swimming pools. In cooler areas of the U.K. the rising Google Maps searches included many indoor activities such as squash, bars and going to the gym. And, as expected, travel was a clear choice for the summer, as indicated by a surge in searches for lodging in almost every region.

Many popular destination searches were located outdoors. National parks and Hawaiian islands were the most popular searches in the U.S., while local parks, zoos, gardens and playgrounds topped Canada’s and Europe’s list. Major landmarks such as the Empire State Building in New York City, Niagara Falls in Canada, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Taj Mahal in India also topped the list of often-searched places in Google Maps. And of course, with the Summer Games drawing in international audiences, Wembley Stadium and the Olympic Stadium were two of the most searched for locations throughout the U.K. this summer.

Check out the destinations that captured people’s attention this summer and see how your interests compared to others around the world. We hope you enjoy this look back to remember the fun places we all went with Google Maps this summer, and we can’t wait to help you find your next adventure!

Posted by Manik Gupta, Sr. Product Manager, Google Maps

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)
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Find awesome videos faster: Get to videos like “Gangnam Style” faster with new search tools that give suggestions while you type, and let you sort through videos or channels. Flip through related videos, comments and more info, all while watching a video.


More ways to share with the people you love: Share that incredible video you found on YouTube on Google+, Facebook or text message in the app, as well as from Twitter and email.


There’s even more to explore with the new YouTube app for iPhone and iPod touch, available for download from the App Store today. We’re working on an optimized version of the YouTube app for iPad in the coming months, and stay tuned for more details.

You’ve already shown us you love YouTube on mobile—to the tune of 1 billion mobile views a day—so we can’t wait to see what you think about this new experience.

Posted by Andrey Doronichev, head of YouTube mobile

(Cross-posted on the YouTube blog)
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Updates for iOS
Starting today, if you’re using the Drive app on your iOS device you can also edit Google documents, just as you can with the Android app. From your iPhone or iPad, you can create a new document, edit an existing one or format text. And, just like on your computer, you’ll be able to see other people’s edits instantly as they’re made.

You’ll also notice other new improvements to the iOS Drive app. For example, you can now view Google presentations on your iPhone or iPad, including speaker notes, full-screen mode and the ability to swipe between slides. You can also create new folders, move files into folders and upload stuff (like photos and videos) from your device directly in the Drive app.

Updates for Android 
We’re also updating the Drive app for Android phones and tablets today. You can now add comments, reply to existing comments and view tables in your Google documents. And you’ll have the same new abilities to view presentations and organize your stuff as your friends with iPhones do.

More to come... 
Looking ahead, we have plenty more planned for the Drive mobile apps—including native editing and real-time collaboration for Google spreadsheets. Stay tuned.



Get Drive in the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and visit the Play Store to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet. To learn more about Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start.

Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Senior Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Enterprise and Drive blogs)
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Turn-by-turn voice navigation in New Delhi, India

Biking directions and Map Maker are also now rolling out to New Zealanders. Local cyclists can access biking directions directly on Google Maps, and use Map Maker to add bike lanes and trails if their favorite route is missing or they discover a new one. Beyond biking trails, Map Maker can also be used to make the New Zealand map more accurate with details such as new road names, building footprints and more.

Biking directions from Remuera in Auckland to the local Google office

Later today, we’ll also release new Street View imagery for more than 150 university campuses globally. With classes just getting started, freshman students, transfers and even empty-nesting parents can now familiarize themselves with college campuses around the world, including UCLA in the U.S., Pembroke College in the U.K., McGill University in Canada and Sophia University in Japan. These new panoramic views join our growing list of universities whose campuses are already available in Google Maps.


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Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles

Finally, to celebrate all the places you can reach with Google Maps—all seven continents, the sky, the moon and even the depths of the ocean—we made a video that we hope will inspire you to keep exploring.



Keep exploring at maps.google.com/helloworld. Here’s to many new adventures.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)
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