Google Building Maker - Yet another Tool from Google

Google Building Maker is the latest innovative tool launched by the Google website which will allow all its users to create three-dimensional buildings making use of aerial images and three-dimensional shapes. The company feels that this latest innovation can be considered more toy-like and can be used for educational purposes like teaching geography to students.

But you might want to ask, what is all this got to do with Search? Well, Google is trying really hard these days to crowdsource its mapping efforts. They intend to review all the user-generated three-dimensional buildings which will be added to Google Earth if a better model is not known to exist. It will not be too far away to see this kind of development to Google Maps too.

Google had carried out a similar exercise way back in 2007 when it held a contest for college students to create three dimensional images of their campuses. Many see this as a gimmick by Google to familiarize its Sketchup tool among the college students but in reality it was a move to improve the content of Google Earth for which they did not possess enough significant and detailed data.

Google intends to use all the content generated in a commercial manner to improve the quality of both maps and search. The website has also decided to do away with TeleAtlas as its United States map provider and start mapping data on its own. Google Maps also added a minor improvement to the site called ‘report a problem’ button using which users can contact Google to edit any map.

All these efforts add up to the fact that Google is persevering to win the maps race against its major competitor MapQuest and is asking help from all its avid users.

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