Posted by Curtis Howell, Redfin Senior Product Manager for Customer Engagement
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Curtis Howell, Redfin senior product manager for customer engagement. Read how Redfin makes it easier for buyers to find their ideal homes.
Redfin launched in 2006 with the mission to change the way people buy and sell homes. Unlike traditional real estate brokerages, Redfin real estate agents are paid based on customer satisfaction, not just commission, so the agent’s and client’s interests are aligned. Redfin uses technology to improve the customer experience at every step, from the initial home search to the closing table.
We used the Google Maps Javascript API to build the web interface for Redfin.com and the Google Maps Android API for the Redfin Android app. People are familiar with the Google Maps interface so they intuitively know how to navigate and search when they come to our site or use our Android app.
People often want to search for houses based on places-of-interest, such as a park or a landmark, and the Google Places API allows them to do just that. They can also find houses for sale in specific neighborhoods by drawing a polygon on a map and then searching within that area.
Finding houses for sale on a map is only the beginning of the homebuying process. The next step is touring homes in-person with a Redfin agent. Our customers often schedule multiple tours in one day, so Redfin uses the Google Maps Distance Matrix API to estimate the time it takes to drive between homes.
Google’s location-based search increased the rate of completed searches performed on our site by 4 percent. Data shows that faster searches leads to more satisfied and loyal website users, which ultimately leads to more clients for Redfin.
Map-based search is one aspect of our technology that makes our agents more efficient and able to deliver great service to Redfin customers. Because Redfin is more efficient than traditional brokerages, we’re able to provide full service and still save our customers money.
Posted by Curtis Howell, Redfin Senior Product Manager for Customer Engagement
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Curtis Howell, Redfin senior product manager for customer engagement. Read how Redfin makes it easier for buyers to find their ideal homes.
Redfin launched in 2006 with the mission to change the way people buy and sell homes. Unlike traditional real estate brokerages, Redfin real estate agents are paid based on customer satisfaction, not just commission, so the agent’s and client’s interests are aligned. Redfin uses technology to improve the customer experience at every step, from the initial home search to the closing table.
We used the Google Maps Javascript API to build the web interface for Redfin.com and the Google Maps Android API for the Redfin Android app. People are familiar with the Google Maps interface so they intuitively know how to navigate and search when they come to our site or use our Android app.
People often want to search for houses based on places-of-interest, such as a park or a landmark, and the Google Places API allows them to do just that. They can also find houses for sale in specific neighborhoods by drawing a polygon on a map and then searching within that area.
Finding houses for sale on a map is only the beginning of the homebuying process. The next step is touring homes in-person with a Redfin agent. Our customers often schedule multiple tours in one day, so Redfin uses the Google Maps Distance Matrix API to estimate the time it takes to drive between homes.
Google’s location-based search increased the rate of completed searches performed on our site by 4 percent. Data shows that faster searches leads to more satisfied and loyal website users, which ultimately leads to more clients for Redfin.
Map-based search is one aspect of our technology that makes our agents more efficient and able to deliver great service to Redfin customers. Because Redfin is more efficient than traditional brokerages, we’re able to provide full service and still save our customers money.
Editor's note: Today Jac de Haan, Developer Marketing for Google Maps for Work, speaks with Anna Hill, Chief Marketing Officer of The Walt Disney Company, UK & Ireland, and Spitfire Studio Client Services Director Tim George. They give us insight into how Disney and Spitfire Studio used Google Maps APIs and Google Street View. The immersive experience brings together more than 1,000 Winnie-the-Pooh assets, including videos, images, stories, downloadable content and games while also providing helpful guides, hints and tips for new mums. Fans navigate the 3-dimensional site and explore different character locations, including Pooh’s house, all through 360° photospheres.
Jac de Haan:Anna, the first question’s for you. The new Hundred Acre Wood site is both modern in its immersive and interactive nature and historic, paying homage to Hundred Acre Wood, the home of Winnie-the-Pooh that we all know and love. What was Disney’s goal in building the website, and why did Disney choose Google Maps for it? Anna Hill: 2016 marks 90 years since families were introduced to the characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, when A.A. Milne’s first story was published. Winnie-the-Pooh and friends have stood the test of time with their heart-warming stories that continue to inspire children and adults alike.
Disney wanted to create the world of Winnie-the-Pooh for parents and children to easily interact with the classic characters and inspire their play time. Google was the perfect partner for delivering the platform—research shows that mothers are very actively searching the Internet for advice, tools and new content. So, we partnered with Spitfire Studio to design and develop the site, which we wanted to be optimised for tablets as well as traditional desktop computers. We anticipated that the site would continue to evolve, so it was intentionally designed to make adding new map locations and content within existing areas over time incredibly easy and seamless. We want to continue building on the experience as we see how children and parents engage with the site and content.
Jac de Haan: Tim, tell us about how you used Google Maps APIs to develop the site.
Tim George: The site’s main interface is a map of the Hundred Acre Wood, which includes graphics of characters — Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore, Piglet and others — and their houses. It’s built using the Google Maps Javascript API, so you can navigate, with zoom and panning, just like any other Google map. We provided our own graphics, so you really feel like you’re in the world of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Places on the map like Pooh’s House and Eeyore’s field are marked with customized pins. Click on a character, and the Google Maps Street View Service launches you into a Street View of that location — you can find yourself right inside Pooh’s House or out in Eeyore’s field. You can pan and look around, just like you can in Street View. We did this using our own creative assets. Once you’re there, you can click objects and access games, advice, videos and more.
We wanted to personalize the experience, so we used the Geolocation capability of the Google Maps JavaScript API along with a Weather API to reflect the weather in your location. The site will suggest play ideas best suited to your local weather, such as rainy-day activities during a stormy afternoon.
Jac de Haan: Anna, how does this Google Maps API integration empower your developers and benefit Winnie the Pooh fans?
Anna Hill: Google Maps APIs are great to have in your creative toolkit, and they let you think and work in unexpected ways. Integrating Google Maps by detecting the locations of website visitors lets us create a more well-rounded experience for both parents and children. In partnership with Spitfire, we’ve created something we’re immensely proud of, and Google Maps play a big part in that. We look forward to seeing how families interact with the Hundred Acre Wood experience and hope that they have a lot of fun engaging with our characters — just as they have for the last 90 years, but now in a thoroughly modern way.
Applications have long been the lifeblood of the enterprise. This has never been more true than in today’s market. And Google has never been more committed to the enterprise. We’re excited to expose our APIs to enterprise developers who can now incorporate advanced technologies such as image recognition, speech recognition, location and maps, email and calendaring into their applications.
Google I/O is a great opportunity to share what excites about the massive digital transformation happening at companies around the globe. We’re thrilled about the speed of innovation with all of our enterprise products, particularly Google Cloud Platform, Google Apps, Maps, Android and Chromebooks. We’re laser focused on creating what developers need to build successfully in the cloud.
At Google, we continue to push new innovations that enable developers to turn great ideas into world class applications. We can also help you get your apps in the hands of your customers through marketplaces like Google Play, Chrome Web Store, Google Apps Marketplace and Cloud Launcher, which serve billions of Android and Chrome users and millions of businesses.
Today’s announcements at I/O further build out our developer toolkit, with new features to help developers build what’s next for the enterprise.
New APIs for Sheets & Slides: With the new Sheets API, we're giving developers a new level of access to some of the most popular features in Sheets. Create new spreadsheets, populate them with data and formulas, insert charts and pivot tables, and pull results right into your apps. Developers can use Sheets in a powerful workflow to push data from their app into Sheets, allowing users to collaborate on that data, before the updated data is pulled back into the original app. The Slides API enables developers to push data from other applications into Slides in order to create custom, polished presentations quickly.
API Partner Ecosystem: A number of partners, including Salesforce, SAP Anywhere, Conga, Prosperworks, Anaplan, Sage, Trello, and Asana are already connecting their services through these new APIs, and we look forward to seeing even more developers follow suit.
Enhancements to the Classroom API: We’re giving developers programmatic access to our most powerful features within Google Classroom. The Classroom API lets school reporting systems sync coursework and grades from Classroom and quickly connect teachers and students to their learning content.
Whether you’re using Google Cloud Platform, integrating with our Machine Learning APIs or building on top of our Google Apps suite, we’re committed to delivering the tools and technologies that help businesses improve productivity, securely connect information across platforms and power new workflows. Earlier this month we announced a BigQuery integration with Google Drive that allows customers to run queries, gather insights and then share that data with teams in a familiar and easy to understand template, no matter where they are. We also recently added two new security certifications, ISO27017 for cloud security and ISO27018 for privacy. And customers like Land O Lakes are taking advantage of our cloud and APIs to revolutionize their fields — in this case, modern farming.
Ever since I began my career in technology, I’ve been working to advance the way the enterprise runs. I worked on some of the first relational databases for Sybase and Tandem and then, at VMware, helped to create an entirely new industry centered around virtualization. Fast forward to today, and I can say that I’ve never been more excited about the potential for the cloud to transform businesses. There was a period in time where the energy was around consumer applications, but we can now see that people are realizing just how much innovation can be done in the enterprise, and it’s enticing more and more developers. While we’re excited about the innovations that we’re bringing to market, we’re even more excited about how you will take advantage of these new advancements. As the momentum continues in the enterprise, we can’t wait to see what you build next.
Editor's note: Today we hear from Nash Islam, co-founder of the UK-based parking service Vallie. Read how Vallie used Google Maps APIs to launch an on-demand valet service in London.
The idea for Vallie came from a problem that so many Londoners face: finding parking in one of the world’s largest and most congested cities. The Daily Telegraph reports that it takes Londoners 20 minutes on average to find a parking spot, and that motorists spend up to 106 days of their lives circling streets to find a spot across the UK.
Using the Vallie app, customers pay £5/hour (up to £25 per day) to drop their car off in any central London location and hand over their keys to a Vallie driver who parks their car in a safe commercial car park. Vallie drivers can return a car anywhere in our serviced zone within 20 minutes. Customers can also request additional services: Vallie offers electric re-charging, car wash and Matters of Testing (MOT) services.
The mapping experience is so fundamental to our on-demand valet service that we wanted to invest in a high quality mapping service. We decided to use Google Maps APIs because it provides a consistent mapping service across all our platforms with quality routing and location data. We worked with Google for Work Premier Partner Ancoris for licensing and general implementation questions, and Google's support team worked with us to ensure we had an efficient implementation.
Customers request pick-ups and returns through the Vallie app. Vallie drivers have their own app that tells them where to meet customers and where to park. We used the Google Maps SDK for iOS to build our iOS app for customers and parkers and the Google Maps Android API for our upcoming Android app. Our online booking process is powered by Google Maps JavaScript API.
A variety of Google Maps APIs are core to our app’s services. We use the Google Places API to display building names or points of interest at meeting locations, which helps both the customers and Vallie drivers. We use Google Maps Directions API to show estimated arrival times. Finally, the Google Maps Distance Matrix API helps us calculate the nearest valet and car park so we can minimize customer wait times.
In the future, we plan to expand further afield in London, and then to other cities across the UK and Europe. We hope to expand our car maintenance services while also exploring ways to make parking much smarter and more effective. As we grow, Google Maps APIs will continue to be at the center of the quality parking and transportation services we provide to our customers.
Posted by Diana Brown, Product Manager at Infoxchange
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series of “Mapping a Better World” posts, highlighting organizations using location data to affect positive local and global change. Today’s guest post comes from Diana Brown, Product Manager at Infoxchange, creators of Ask Izzy, a mobile app for Australia’s homeless that connects them with shelter, food and other essential services. The company was founded in a Melbourne garage in 1989.
No one expects to become homeless. For those that do, knowing where to find resources like water, shelter and medical supplies — resources we can’t live without but can take for granted when we have a roof over our head — can be a daily struggle.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy Turnbull speak with a former homeless man who helped consult on Ask Izzy.
In Australia, 1 in 200 people are homeless, but 80 percent of them have a smartphone. We realized that these smartphones could act as lifeline to basic resources, providing real-time information about nearby services, including services that offer food and shelter. That’s how we came up with the idea for the Ask Izzy app.
With the help of Google Maps APIs, Ask Izzy gives homeless people information about over 350,000 vital nearby services such as shelter, food, needle exchanges, employment resources, technology facilities like Wi-Fi and charging stations, legal and financial advice. The Places API allows us to suggest specific destinations and services based on a user's current location. We can tell a user how far away various services are with the Distance Matrix API and provide transit options with the Directions API.
We work closely with those who have overcome homelessness to understand the specific needs of the homeless population and provide the best access to resources. We also collaborate with the service providers who help meet these specific needs.
None of the benefits provided by Ask Izzy would be possible without our partners, whose cutting-edge technology we depend on every day. We’re thrilled to call Google a partner and we look forward to growing our working relationship and doing more to address the needs of our users.
Posted by Alessandra Mosenifar, Senior Product Designer for charity: water
Editor's note: This is the fourth post in our “Mapping a Better World” series, highlighting organizations using location data to affect positive local and global change. Today’s guest blogger is Alessandra Mosenifar, Senior Product Designer for charity: water. Read how the organization uses Google Maps to share the results of their work providing clean water for millions of people.
Charity: water’s mission is to bring clean drinking water to everyone on the planet. We work towards this mission by funding global partners who understand what’s needed for their specific communities. Our partners around the world have years of experience working with their state and local governments to build sustainable, community-owned water projects. We ensure this information is transparent and accessible so that donors, stakeholders and interested users can see what has been funded and the realized impact.
With Google Maps APIs, we were able to create a new way for donors to view exactly where their dollars go. We also built an easily digestible map packed with details and visuals for the thousands of water projects we've completed. Each project is represented by an icon on the map. When a user clicks the icon the project details appear — including the project completion date, the number of people benefiting from clean water, the implementation partner and the project's precise GPS coordinates.
We also recently partnered with Google on a program that allows us to continuously monitor water projects and provide reporting accessible via our website. Using sensors to measure water flow per hour (transmitted weekly), we know if a water point is broken, as well as learn patterns of usage on a daily or yearly basis. Anyone can take a look at project status and details, including the average number of liters of water provided each day.
To date, we’ve funded nearly 20,000 water projects in 24 countries, providing clean water to more than 6 million people. Thanks to Google Maps APIs, donors can see exactly where and how their money is spent. Beyond providing clean water for millions of people, we’re helping transform how charities work by providing the highest degree of transparency about donation impact. If you're a nonprofit and interested in staying up to date on grants offerings for Google products like Google Maps APIs, apply to join Google for Nonprofits today.
Editor's note: Today we hear from Martin Port, BigChange Apps CEO. Read how BigChange Apps helps its customers improve mobile workforce productivity, efficiency and their bottom line with Google Maps APIs. Many companies that require fleet and workforce tracking waste too much time, money and fuel managing their mobile workforces because they’re using old technology, manual reporting or paper-based systems. At BigChange Apps, we set out to change that by building a mobile workforce management platform called JobWatch that combines a back-office application, vehicle-tracking and mobile apps for drivers. The platform connects a company’s back-office processes to their mobile workforce while also allowing their end-customer to place new bookings, check the ETA and status of existing jobs and even view historical information and documents such as invoices. Companies can manage jobs and create reports in real time directly from JobWatch, improving workforce productivity and eliminating manual processes like providing paper project quotes.
Maps are at the heart of what we do — they power the mobile apps for drivers and our back-office web app for dispatchers and other staff. When we started, we used a different mapping solution. But it wasn’t keeping up by adding new features. Pricing was too complex, and we couldn’t get the help we needed. So we switched to Google, which gave us great tools in Google Maps APIs and advice on how to use them to improve JobWatch. And since Google Maps sets the standard for the way people interface with maps, we spent less time training our customers how to use JobWatch.
The back-office web app uses the Google Maps Javascript API for its Maps tab, which lets our customers track vehicles in real-time. Dispatchers can see where all their resources are. So if there’s a problem out in the field, they can immediately send help by dispatching someone nearby.
What’s also great about Google Maps APIs is they integrate so well with other systems, like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. We’ve built a widget that imports contacts, then passes them through the Google Maps Geocoding API, which translates addresses into geographic coordinates so they can be more accurately mapped.
JobWatch means big savings for our customers — in two recent customer case studies, our customers have reported a 10 percent reduction in fuel use, 10 hours less of travel time per mobile worker per month, an extra four jobs finished per driver per month and eight hours of office administration time saved per mobile employee. Happy customers translate into growth for us — our revenue grew from £337,000 in 2013 to £2 million in 2015. By 2020, we forecast having £4 million in recurring annual revenue. For that, we have Google Maps to thank, by providing the tools to help us build a single platform uniting drivers and the back office.
Editor's note: This is the second post in our “Mapping a Better World” series, highlighting organizations using location data to affect positive local and global change. Today’s guest post comes from Jake Wayne, co-founder of Companion, a safety app created so no one has to walk home alone. The company was founded by five University of Michigan students.
Making sure friends and family get home safe, especially late at night, is a common concern, but a text message confirmation can be unreliable since people often forget to send the message or check that the other person arrived safely. Some colleges have taken safety precautions by introducing escort systems in which police officers walk students home, but outside of these institutions there wasn't an automated system in place to help people feel safe and connected if they're walking or driving home alone.
When we learned that fellow University of Michigan students felt unsafe walking or driving home late at night, we decided to create a way for people to let family, friends or the public safety department know they’re headed home and give them a tool to quickly contact others if they feel unsafe. Younger generations have grown up with mobile phones, so it’s natural for them to reach for their phones in times of need. That’s why we created Companion, because human safety is an issue beyond college campuses.
When we set out to create the app, we knew we wanted to build something that ultimately improves the way we live. In just three months, we created an app that now more than one million people in 184 countries have interacted with — both as users and companions. We’re excited to continue making an impact.
When it comes to safety, everything needs to work seamlessly. We decided to use Google Maps for our app, because consumers and developers alike trust Google Maps technology. Google Maps is easy to use and available internationally. When users open the Companion app and see Google Maps, it gives them peace of mind due to its familiar user interface.
When a user requests a friend to accompany them as a “companion” on the walk home, the app tracks the person walking home on a map in the app. Companions don’t even need to have the app downloaded to make sure the user get home safely. The user can reach out to their companion to let them know they feels nervous with one tap on their phone, prompting the companion to check in. With two taps, the user can dial 911.
If the app detects a sudden change, like the user running or removing headphones, the app sends a notification to the user asking if they’re OK. If there’s no response within 15 seconds, the app notifies the companion, who can instantly contact the police from the app. The app will also make siren noises and go into alert mode, until the user is confirmed safe.
The Google Maps Places API makes it incredibly easy for users to input their destinations quickly and accurately. Google Maps also considers travel history when users have their location history turned on to help make travel time estimates more accurate. Using the Directions API, we’re able to better estimate how long it will take a user to get from Point A to Point B, and communicate this to their companions every step of the way.
The Companion app also collects anonymous information about locations where users feel nervous. This allows us to analyze the data and share it with the safety officials and universities to help make streets safer. For example, we’re working with the University of Michigan police department to help determine areas that should be patrolled.
When you’re dealing with safety, user trust and confidence is important. Google Maps APIs helps our users feel that Companion can facilitate a safe journey home.
Posted by Dr. Norbert Schmitz, Managing Director of Meo Carbon Solutions
Editor's note: This is the first in a series of “Mapping a better world” blog posts highlighting ways in which organizations are using location data to affect positive local and global change. Google Maps APIs continues to create opportunities and tools to support our community.
Today we hear from Dr. Norbert Schmitz, managing director of Meo Carbon Solutions. Read how Meo Carbon Solutions and Google for Work Premier Partner Wabion used Google Maps APIs and Google Cloud Platform to develop Global Risk Assessment Services (GRAS). The tool provides reliable information about the ecological and social risks of expanding agriculture into natural habitats.
In the European Union, companies that sell biofuels must get certifications to show that producing their fuel — often made from agricultural crops — does not cause deforestation, the loss of biodiversity or the loss of carbon stocks. We established GRAS to provide a single tool to gather and visualize this data required to support a credible certification.
Through GRAS, we’ve made this information accessible not only to governments and NGOs, but also to businesses, financial institutions and individuals. For example, a U.S. company buying soybean oil from Brazil can use GRAS to verify the ecological and social risk exposure of the mills and the farmers supplying the mills.
We decided the most effective way to present this complex set of information was to build a web app that would overlay data from multiple sources on top of a map. Using this tool, auditors can compare before-and-after maps of a certain area, and based on changes to the habitat, either grant or deny certifications.
To build GRAS, we partnered with IT consultant Wabion, a Google for Work Premier Partner. After testing several map solutions, we chose Google Maps because of its high performance, ability to easily integrate data from multiple sources, flexible APIs, solid support and large user community.
The GRAS website combines mapping information with data from dozens of government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other global databases. It uses the Google Maps JavaScript API to display the base maps for the site. The API also visualizes layers and more than 100 types of data — including agriculture, deforestation and social welfare — on top of the maps.
Users can upload and visualize their own data sets. The Google Maps Geocoding API verifies map locations, and the Google Maps Places API autocomplete makes it easy for site users to choose locations that they want to learn about.
A GRAS visualization of biodiversity risk in Brazil
GRAS is powered by the Google Cloud Platform — specifically, Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine. Combining these services with the Google Maps APIs lets us handle geodata in a 10-terabyte database, which hosts more than 100 layers, many of them extremely large.
We’ve recently expanded GRAS beyond our original mission to provide insights for other industries by expanding the data layered on top of maps. We’ve included new information on biodiversity, land-use changes, and available carbon stock. We’ve also been able to incorporate numerous measurements of social health — ranging from the Global Slavery Index to the Global Hunger Index and the UNICEF index of access to drinking water and sanitation.
Through GRAS, we’ve made this information accessible not only to governments and NGOs, but also to businesses, financial institutions and individuals. For example, a U.S. company buying soybean oil from Brazil can use GRAS to verify the ecological and social risk exposure of the mills and the farmers supplying the mills.
Far exceeding our initial vision, the GRAS website combines transparency with the power of technology to help users in wide-ranging industries, —from food, to chemicals and energy — operate environmentally and socially sound supply chains.
