Maps Platform
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Hello Places API for Android and iOS!
Thursday, March 19, 2015
People don’t think of their location in terms of coordinates on a map. They want context on what shops or restaurants they’re at, and what’s around them. To help your apps speak your users’ language, we’re launching the
Places API for Android
, as well as opening a beta program for the
Places API for iOS
.
The Places API
web service
and
JavaScript library
have been available for some time. By providing native support for Android and iOS devices, you can optimize the mobile experience with the new APIs by taking advantage of the device’s location signals.
The Places APIs for Android and iOS bridge the gap between simple geographic locations expressed as latitude and longitude, and how people associate location with a known place. For example, you wouldn’t tell someone you were born at 25.7918359,-80.2127959. You’d simply say, “I was born in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida.” The Places API brings the power of Google’s global places database into your app, providing more than 100 million places, like restaurants, local businesses, hotels, museums, and other attractions.
Key features include:
Add a
place picker
: a drop-in UI widget that allows your users to specify a place
Get the place
where the user is right now
Show
detailed place information
, including the place’s name, address, phone number, and website
Use
autocomplete
to save your users time and frustration typing out place names, by automatically completing them as they type
Make your app stand out by
adding new places
that are relevant to your users and seeing the places appear in Google's Places database
Improve the map around you by
reporting
the presence of a device at a particular place.
To get started with the Places API for Android, watch this
DevByte
, check out the developer
documentation
, and play with the
demos
. To apply for the Places API for iOS beta program, go
here
.
Posted by Jen Kovnats Harrington, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs
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