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LAURENCE MORONEY: Welcome to "Coffee with a Googler."
Today, I'm meeting with Ankur Kotwal
to talk all about Google Maps and great things
that you can build them.
We'll even have a chat about the Santa Tracker app
that Ankur worked on.
Ankur, I've been a Maps developer for a while.
I love doing it.
And almost every time I go to anything Maps,
I see your videos, I see your blogs,
I see stuff that you've done.
So it's great to have you here.
But tell us all about Google Maps,
and what it is that you do with it.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
I'm part of the Google Maps API developer relations team.
And what we do is, we are a conduit
between third-party developers and our internal engineering
teams.
So as third-party developers give us feedback on our APIs,
or they talk to us about use cases
that they'd like to see us address,
we take that feedback to our product and engineering teams.
They then take it, and prioritize it, and start
to build those things out.
And then we have a team of tech writers
that write the technical documentation that you
see at developers.google.com.
We have a team of engineers that actually
build libraries and samples.
And in fact, they like to see themselves
as the 0th customer of the API.
[CHUCKLING]
LAURENCE MORONEY: Typical engineer-- is the 0th customer.
ANKUR KOTWAL: That's it.
And so they get to have that initial first feedback pass.
And then we have developer advocates like myself,
like yourself, that go in, then tell the developers
that we've built this that we've taken their feedback on.
And then the cycle repeats.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
So it's great that this stuff isn't just
built in isolation, right?
You've got folks like yourself, who are there
as that conduit between the developers
and the outside world-- and the engineers who are actually
building it.
But I hear you've got, like, a little bit of an announcement
of some new things that you're going
to be doing in that space?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
So actually, to take that relationship with the community
further, we've just recently launched the Google Maps API
beta program at developers.google.com/maps/beta.
And what this really is is a way for us
to get feedback on APIs before we launch them.
And for developers, the advantage
is, they can see the types of things
that we're working on ahead of time
and catch us at that point of our development cycle,
that they can give us feedback that's quite
meaningful and actionable.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
ANKUR KOTWAL: So we can take that feedback,
make any changes to the product, make sure
that at the time we launch it, the quality is there,
but also its usefulness is really there.
So it's available-- it's out now for sign-up.
You know, we are looking to take people in in batches.
So if anyone sort of hits the site
and sees that the form is closed,
we will open it up again at a later time.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, cool.
So what was the site again?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Developers.google.com/maps/beta.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Am I allowed to go sign up?
ANKUR KOTWAL: I think you have special access already,
Laurence.
[LAUGHING]
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, one of the things
like with Maps that I remember seeing--
and I know it's a project that you've been working on,
and I've been dying to ask you about it-- is the Santa
Tracker.
You've been doing this as a 20% project at Google.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah.
It's a 20% project that's a true labor of love,
because we work throughout holidays,
and over the end-of-year holidays,
and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
But basically, the reason we love to work on it
is that it brings joy to children and adults who
feel like children.
And so, the point is that throughout December, we
can play some games on our website-- on the Android apps,
as well, we have some games.
And then on Christmas Eve, on December 24th,
when Santa takes off, you can track Santa's progress
through the world as he delivers presents
and he stops by your city, and so on.
So we started working on the Android app
about four years ago.
I was one of the founding members of it.
And I love contributing to it every year
and just watching all the reactions online
as people use it throughout the holidays.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, does this get you off his naughty list
and onto his nice list?
ANKUR KOTWAL: I hope so.
[LAUGHING]
But no, it's just-- it's so much fun working with him.
Because when we put the Android device on his sleigh
so that he can give us his location, you know,
everything has to work.
So we don't get another shot at this,
and we don't even get to delay our launches.
So it is actually a lot more pressure
than you would typically expect.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's really neat.
And actually, I did have one question
that inquiring minds want to know,
as you are the Santa Tracker expert.
It's summer now-- (WHISPERING) where is he?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Where is Santa?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Well, he's relaxing, for starters.
Usually, we find that he's relaxing on a beach.
He's often hard to reach at this time of the year.
LAURENCE MORONEY: He's earned a break.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
He definitely earns his break.
But if you happen to go to the Santa Tracker website,
or if you have a look at our launch videos,
often, he's coming off some sort of island, or like a cruise.
It's funny-- for someone that lives in the North Pole,
he enjoys warm weather.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Ah, I can't say I blame him.
[LAUGHING]
Now, I hear you had a really tough project
manager on this at one point.
ANKUR KOTWAL: I did.
It was my four-year-old-- or three-year-old son,
at the time.
So I had a newborn and a three-year-old son.
And unfortunately, I told my three-year-old son,
before my second son was born, that I would build
a day-night cycle in Santa Tracker,
so that when you touch the sun, it would set,
and the moon would come up.
And when you touch the moon, it would do the opposite.
At the same time, my second son was born,
and so we were in and out of the hospital.
But my three-year-old son was relentless.
He would say to me everyday, Dad,
does the sun go down, and the moon come up yet?
And so I spent many an hour trying
to build this out for him.
And it's the reactions from people like my kids
that really drive me towards Santa Tracker.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's what makes it all worthwhile.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah, absolutely.
LAURENCE MORONEY: But he was a tough project manager.
ANKUR KOTWAL: He is tough.
He is really tough.
But he was happy with the end result.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's what matters.
ANKUR KOTWAL: So I got his tick of approval
at the end of the day.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Very cool.
Now, it's not just Maps, right?
Like in the Geo APIs, there's a whole bunch of other stuff
that we can work with.
Can you tell us about some of them?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
So typically, people think of the Maps APIs
as the visualization pieces.
But it's actually much more than that.
We have the sort of data APIs through our web services.
So things like the Directions API
are immensely valuable, where you
can get the step-by-step directions from point A
to point B. Actually, more than that-- you can add waypoints
as well, to say, I want to get from here to here,
but I want to pass through this, this, and this.
And you can get it with different modes of transport.
And then you can look at ways to visualize that.
But these data APIs are really, really valuable.
They help you create some magical experiences.
The Places API is another example,
where you can find out about real-world places--
things like their opening hours, things like their ratings, even
photos.
But my favorite will probably be the Roads API.
So something that we don't often realize
about our mobile devices is that the GPS sensors on them--
they're not always very accurate.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Uh-oh.
ANKUR KOTWAL: So even though you're
driving along the road or a path,
you'll find that the data that's coming from your GPS sensor
is a little bit noisy.
It's a bit of a zigzag rather than a straight line.
Now, developers came to us and said, hey,
can you help us solve this?
Because we know that the user is driving--
we know that they're on a road, but we don't have a nice way
to represent this.
And so we built this Roads API.
So you can submit a bunch of latlongs to it--
latitudes and longitudes.
And it will snap them to a road and return them back to you
and follow the path of the road.
So it may even insert more points
as you go through roundabouts and things like that.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice, nice.
I've noticed that on the East Coast of the US,
the freeways tend to have service roads.
So you can be on the inside lane of the freeway,
and there's a service road parallel to that.
And then sometimes my GPS has me saying,
you're on the service road-- get on the freeway--
and that kind of thing.
It gets confused between the two.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Well, at least it's a road.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's true.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Sometimes you get GPS points
in, like, a field, right?
[LAUGHING]
And the Roads API really helps there.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool, cool.
You mention that you're really excited by some
of the innovative ways that developers
are using Google Maps and the various Google Maps APIs?
Do you have an example that you can share?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
Actually, you know, right now, one of the big topics
of conversation is VR.
And what I'm really interested in
is VR as an educational tool.
And so, when you start to take Street View and put it into VR
and take that into classrooms, and be
able to take young students through the pyramids in Egypt,
through the Great Barrier Reef, and show them
what it looks like, it's a very different experience
to when you and I grew up, where we'd look at pictures in books.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Draw a triangle and-- passage here,
and--
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
And we had to use our imagination a lot more.
But they get to see what it's actually like.
And I think that's really, really wonderful.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I've seen the Barrier Reef VR experience
that you mention.
And the one thing for me is that it put it into context
just how precious it is.
So when we talk about, like, protecting the Barrier Reef,
it's when you see it and you can feel it--
you feel more emotionally attached
to wanting to protect it.
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
And, I mean, I hope it stays as pristine
as it has been in the past.
But now we have a snapshot of what it looked like.
And you can really experience it.
If you haven't taken a Google Cardboard
and played with the Street View app, you really should.
And the API enables all of that, too.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Great example.
Thank you.
Now also, I know there's a whole bunch of, like, helper
libraries to be able to do some great map
scenarios, like polyline encoding, and all
that kind of stuff for Android developers.
Could you tell us a little bit about them?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
So we have this open source library called the Android Maps
Utils, and it has a number of features.
I'm going to call out two of my favorite ones, which
are different ways to represent markers.
So often, you know, we have markers on a map.
But sometimes, we're showing lots and lots of data,
and different developers deal with it differently.
Sometimes they restrict how many markers they show,
and they'll restrict to a view port.
But some visualizations that you can
look at are things like marker clustering,
so that as you zoom out, it will combine the markers
and represent it in some visual way-- typically, a number.
And then as you zoom in, it splits up and then populates
the markers elsewhere.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So if you zoom far out from a city,
and you're looking, for example, at restaurants,
there could be 1,000 markers.
When instead of having 1,000 things drawn,
you're going to cluster them into [INAUDIBLE].
ANKUR KOTWAL: Exactly.
Because there's no value in presenting 1,000 markers--
LAURENCE MORONEY: There's a big performance hit too, right?
ANKUR KOTWAL: Yeah.
But how is the user supposed to choose?
It's not meaningful at that point.
So marker clustering really helps.
And the other one is Heat Maps.
So again, if you're talking about things like restaurants,
you can start to see hot spots in a city
as to where some of the more popular or well-rated
restaurants are.
And maybe you want to just sort of head there
and decide on the spot as to which restaurant
you want to eat at.
So Heat Maps are a really good way to visualize that as well.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow, Ankur.
I mean, there's just so much things
we've covered, from how you're getting feedback
from developers to the product teams
so that we can build stuff.
And the new beta channel-- new beta program
that you're opening up.
Santa Tracker and all this stuff that
was involved in that-- that's like, that was hilarious,
and some good stuff there.
And now, just all of the different things,
the different APIs, the services APIs,
the Android libraries-- you're a busy man.
ANKUR KOTWAL: You know what?
It's the product that really drives me.
The Maps API was one of the first APIs
that Google launched, and it's actually
been more than 10 years since we launched that API.
And we've seen such innovative uses of Maps
on the web and even in mobile apps.
So I can't wait to see where we go next with it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Sounds good.
So thanks, everybody.
If you've any questions for me, or if you've
any questions for Ankur, just please leave them
in the comments below.
And don't forget to subscribe to the Google Developers channel.
Thank you.
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