on Thursday announced a new Google Maps-related online product that should help both companies and regular consumers enjoy a better maps experience. The Google Maps Gallery will offer let governments, business and non-profits create specialized maps using Google’s Google Maps Engine and share them online. The new maps will appear in search results and offer different experiences than Google’s own Maps service.
The new feature comes just after a recent major Google Maps update that added several exciting new features.
With Maps Gallery, the institutions that will create new maps using Google’s tools will be in complete control over the content that appears in their maps, as they’ll be able to customize the branding, styling and licensing of their maps.
“Maps Gallery works like an interactive, digital atlas where anyone can search for and find rich, compelling maps,” Google wrote. “Maps included in the Gallery can be viewed in Google Earth and are discoverable through major search engines, making it seamless for citizens and stakeholders to access diverse mapping data, such as locations of municipal construction projects, historic city plans, population statistics, deforestation changes and up-to-date emergency evacuation routes.”
The organization that already have Maps Gallery include National Geographic Society, World Bank Group, United States Geological Survey, Florida Emergency Management and the City of Edmonton for the time being.
A Google Maps Gallery screenshot follows below.
