Jun 15, 2011 15:51 GMT  ·  By

Google is very, very interested in its Places service and continues to build on it and integrate it with all of its other services. It makes sense, local data is a huge new market, especially on mobile devices. The most obvious integration is in Google Maps and already the two products are greatly intertwined.

Now Google is taking the integration one step further with the new My Places tab in Google Maps, which replaces the former My Maps.

"To date, you’ve been able to star places on Google Maps, rate them via Google Places, or add them to a customized map with your own icons and annotations through My Maps," Hiroki Asakawa, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

"But keeping track of all the locations you care about and memorizing which places you starred or rated isn’t easy. So today, we’re unveiling the new My Places tab on Google Maps, which helps you quickly view and interact with your saved maps, starred locations, and rated businesses," he announced.

The new My Places tab lists a selection of places you're rated or starred in Google Maps, Hotpot, Places and so on. It also contains all of your saved maps, which were under the My Maps tab, so you won't lose anything with the new feature.

You can also filter to see only Places you've starred or rated, or only your saved maps. You can add new maps as well, to save or to share, just as always, with the "Create new map" link.

The new section makes it easier to manage your saved maps and places, you can delete any of the entries from the list via the drop-down menu accessible via the down arrow icon to the right.

The new feature is now live in Google Maps, but you need to be logged into your Google account to access it, for obvious reasons. All of the changes here are also synced across all of the places where you can access the data.