Digital map quality has been a hot topic in the tech industry since iOS 6 launched without a Google Maps app, and users were left trying Apple Maps, which has been full of highly publicized errors.
That’s not to say that Google Maps is perfect by any means. Google put out a post on its Google Maps blog today about how important feedback is from users. In that post, the company also mentioned that Google Maps currently has over a billion monthly active users, and that’s without a Google Maps iOS app (though one should be coming in the near future). Granted, iOS users can still access Google Maps on the web.
“There are more than one billion monthly active users of Google Maps services, and we are able to reach users in over 40 languages on our desktop maps and mobile maps Help Centers,” Google notes.
Google said that Maps and Earth had a billion users back in June, but that was before the iOS 6 release.
Interestingly enough, Google’s post comes just the day after Google SVP, Engineering VIc Gundotra discussed Google+ user counts. He announced on Thursday that over 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google, and 135 million are active in just the stream. In a conversation with Danny Sullivan at SMX, he talked about Google+ is really just Google, however, noting that if they just counted Google users, it would be over a billion.
“Google+ is the next version of Google,” he said. “So, if you love YouTube, or Chrome, or Search, or Android, or Gmail, or Maps, we’re bringing it all together…and it’s exciting, even in its early stages to see this kind of momentum and growth.”
“At some point, we’re going to have a billion users who have upgraded to Google+, then when are we going to say that’s just Google? That’s just a Google user,” he adds.
Now, Google is saying clearly that Google Maps alone has over a billion monthly active users, so if Google+ is really just Google, it’s doing pretty well in the user count department.
