Google Maps is getting a new AI-powered “Ask Maps” feature

For those of us who weren’t sure we’d heard enough about chatbots and how they can find their way into all facets of modern life, Alphabet announced on Thursday that it would be integrating Gemini into Google Maps.

Bot-seat driver

As part of its “biggest navigation upgrade in over a decade,” the new “Ask Maps” feature will allow users to ask more sophisticated questions in the Google Maps app, providing chill-sounding use cases like, “My friends are coming from Midtown East to meet me after work. Any spots with a cozy aesthetic and a table for 4 at 7 tonight?”

Anyone with a decent handle on their local area and a tight grasp of Google Maps’ “Saved Places” feature might balk at that request, but other examples like phone-charging spots that aren’t busy coffee shops, or new trip-planning capabilities, could prove genuinely useful.

However, whether Alphabet plumbing its chatbot into the Google Maps app will be enough to win over fans of its biggest rivals in the navigation game is another matter entirely.

iCan do better

With Google Maps having been seen by many as the superior option for a while, social media users have revisited the maps debate of late, pitting the Alphabet product against Apple’s version on purely aesthetic grounds. Some of the results are pretty damning. Exhibit A:

And — in what maybe feels like a slightly less fair, but equally damaging, point of comparison — exhibit B:

But whether you prefer the default map that comes with an iPhone, the one that’s built into Android devices, or some secret (probably more practical) third thing, the contest between the first two definitely seems to be getting more intense recently... at least for people who are using the web versions of each.

At the end of 2024, around 17.7 million Americans were flocking to the Google Maps web version each month, perhaps trying to work out the best route home for the holidays or get ahead of winter roadworks — while just 5.5 million visited maps.apple.com across the same month. In the years since, the gap between the two has narrowed, and their lanes look to have almost converged last month, with just over 400,000 monthly web visits separating the pair.

Maybe it’s because of what some critics see as the degradation of the overall Google Maps experience, improvements and upgrades for its competitor, or simply the fact that you can still only use Apple Maps via the browser on Android devices, while you can get the Google Maps app on iPhones. Whatever it is, Alphabet is clearly hoping Gemini can provide the answers moving forward.