You may have seen the recent announcement of the Google Maps Navigation application. And you may have thought: Hey, just another navigation device! But you may want to have a closer look at the whole thing, since what they are proposing is something that may be the killer application of the Navigation industry. Why? Let’s have a closer look. First of all, its for free – that’a already a killer! But even though this may seem of overarching importance, it may not be the “killing reason”. Because the second is: its personalized and up to date. No need to add-on extra’s, points of interests, etc. Everything is already there! 

Why? For this we have to understand a bit more about Google Maps. This application has been the killer of other online Maps. It disrupted the traditional connotation of a 2D view of a Map in 2 ways: (1) by offering Satellite view, Street view, etc, and (2) then putting information layers on top (putting location-relevant information on the map – such as where restaurant are, or shops, or my favorite park or running trail). In this sense, maps have become another way of organizing information, which is precisely Google’s mission! So with Google Maps we have all the relevant information of the Internet on the Map. 

Now, what happens if you start navigating with Google Maps? You may want to this in Streetview, which effectively means that you see exactly how your way will look. Nice, but this is probably also not a killer. So why do I think that there is a killer? Have a look at the following Demo. You don’t need to watch the entire video, 30 seconds, starting at Minute 3.00 will be enough!

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Isn’t this surprising? It’s finally a Navigation system that knows all your personal points of interest, and that on top of this understands your voice! Not the preloaded (and limited -somebody made a decision for us about what’s interesting and what’s not) points of interest, that traditional navigation systems offer (for an extra price, of course), but the ones that come to your mind. Anywhere, at any moment of time, taking advantage of all the information that is out there in the Internet. More conceptually, this means again addressing the long tail, those tiny or temporary things that have traditionally been left out. We used to see only the major points of interest. Now we can see anything, and the systems tells you how to go there. For free. 

An interesting twist to all of this is that Google offers this application only for Android phones. So, if you are deciding what type of a phone you want to buy next, Navigation could well be something that inclines your decision towards and Android phone. This is bad news for iPhones! And for the rest of phones, too, but they are already lagging behind anyway, at least when it comes to using the phone to browse the Internet. The announcement of this application being exclusively for Android phones is another indication of the changing heat of the Google – Apple relationship. Do you remember the “best” applications of the initial iPhone? They were all from Google! Search, Maps, … And now? Well, at least as of today, Google Map Navigation won’t be for the iPhone. With this we now probably understand much better what Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt meant on October 16th, when he said that “Android adoption is about to explode” (interested? Here is a good video analysis of what’s going on). 

We may well see extremely interesting times in the mobile space, and will continue watching how the competition evolves. But this will be the topic for a different post, coming soon!