Google is announcing plans Wednesday to release a new Android application called Google Maps Navigation. When combined with a GPS-equipped mobile phone running Android 2.0, it provides turn-by-turn directions powered by Google Maps and a slick user interface that combines features such as voice recognition and Google Street View. Google Maps Navigation, like seemingly everything that emerges from Google, will be free.
Mobile platforms--Android and others--are so powerful now that you can build client apps that can do magical things connected to the cloud, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a briefing for reporters at Google's headquarters on Tuesday.
Companies in the cell phone navigation industry have seen this day coming for quite some time. Right now, the beta application only works on phones that will use the Android 2.0 software, which is scheduled to be available very soon with the expected arrival of Motorola's Droid phone on Verizon's network.
Googles Vic Gundotra appeared to demonstrate the application on the Droid: he wouldn' confirm it, but it was a shiny black Android 2.0 phone running on Verizon's network and bearing Motorola's stamp, so we're probably not going too far out on a limb here.
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