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Have you ever landed at an airport and seen some smartly dressed valets standing around with travelers’ names printed on cards, waiting to greet them? Not all of us will ever be the sort of bigwig who gets that kind of white-glove service, but we might be able to at least pretend a little bit, thanks to a new system that’s in the works for Google Maps.
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Granted, it’s nowhere near as fancy as having your own private chauffer to drive you around, but in the new version 26.45.00.1011720968 update of Google Maps for Android, we’re seeing the app prepare to deliver new airport-arrival greetings.
As you can see from those text strings, the message seems designed to steer your attention towards Ask Maps, encouraging you to take advantage of the tool in the new city you find yourself in.
We also find this pre-formatted Ask Maps request, further lowering the bar for getting users started with giving the feature a try.
So far, this appears to be largely location-based, and involves the presence of a new AirportGeofenceSyncWorker component to figure out when you’re arriving from a flight in the first place, all while working in the background. That said, we do know that Ask Maps can already tap into Gemini Personal Intelligence if you’ve got that enabled, so it may be possible to pick up further insight into your travel plans by directly accessing emails and calendar entries.
Google’s plans for the tool look quite broad at the moment, and we find reference to over 90 individual airports:
Google first introduced Ask Maps back in March of this year, and if you haven’t been taking advantage of it, you sound like exactly the sort of user this upcoming airport notification is designed for.
Ask Maps offers an AI-powered, conversational way to easily tap into the service’s database of destinations and points of interest. Rather than worrying about filters to refine search results, you can just tell Ask Maps precsiely the sort of place you’d like to check out, and it will do all the legwork of narrowing down possible options.
