14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Maps is one of Google's oldest products and certainly one of the most known. It's been around for years and in some places, the information it provides is extensive. But the world is, well, a big place and there are plenty or countries and regions where mapping data in Google Maps is lacking, to say the least. Generally, these are places where it hasn't made too much economic sense to invest in acquiring all the data.
Africa, as you can imagine, wasn't high on Google's list of places to buy mapping data for. Luckily, the company can rely on the aid of its users who have been a ton of information through Map Maker. So much information in fact that Google is now launching Maps for 30 African countries, in beta, and also opening up the service for businesses.
"Our big announcement today is that we are launching Maps domains for 30 countries across Africa. So what's on offer? As well as searching online Maps for towns, highways, or roads, Google Maps users can now find local businesses. This could be a burger place in Lagos, a garage in Kampala, a hairdresser in Accra or an airport shuttle in Dakar," Joe Mucheru, Google Sub Saharan Africa, and Jarda Bengl, Product Manager at Google, wrote.
What this means is that African businesses now have access to the Google Local Business Center, a service designed for small businesses to add information about themselves to be used in places like Google Maps but also manage advertising on Google.
Google Maps may not be perfect but with the help of regular users, more and more countries are getting access to accurate mapping information. The Map Maker program has been a huge success and say what you will about the search giant profiting from the free labor users put in but it would have been a long time until many of the places that have benefited from Map Maker would have been viable economic venues.
And just to drive the point home, Google started offering Map Maker in Africa 'way back' in 2009 and the results so far speak for themselves. "Our efforts to start putting Africa on a map kicked off back in 2009 when we announced the launch of Google Maps for Kenya. Not long afterwards, we announced that users across 45 African countries could build and edit maps in Map Maker. Most recently, we launched Google Maps for South Africa," the post also read.