On Google Maps: More areas in RP get virtual facelift

MANILA, Philippines - Google Inc. has announced the push of the second round of Google Map Maker edits generated by local users in the Philippines to Google Maps, Google’s dynamic, collaborative geographic search platform. 

Some of the areas that received a virtual facelift in the latest push to Google Maps are the cities of Baguio and Angeles in the north; Bacolod and Iloilo in the Visayas; and Cagayan de Oro and Koronadal in Mindanao.

Aside from adding street-level details, users have utilized other useful features of Google Map Maker for plotting landmarks and tourist attractions around the country, including the Merville Access Road in Parañaque City.

“We are truly amazed at the enthusiastic and passionate response to Google Map Maker in the Philippines, which is the number two country in the world for this product. There are now thousands of local users who have contributed hundreds of thousands of edits to Google Map Maker in the past six months,” said Derek Callow, marketing head of Google Southeast Asia.

“On behalf of the millions of people all over the world who can now see and use the improved Google maps of the Philippines, we’d like to thank all those exceptional Filipino contributors who proudly, selflessly and tirelessly continue to enhance the virtual face of their beautiful country,” he said.

Callow added: “We have seen an increase in Map Maker edits for the areas outside of the main cities which indicates the interest among Filipinos across the country to map out their local communities and contribute to this national effort. The next step is to encourage fun community-level activities to accelerate the mapping momentum, so we created a Mapping Party Kit to help Filipinos map their entire country and all 7107 islands, one party at a time.”

Google Map Maker (www.google.com/mapmaker) was launched in the Philippines in October last year to provide map enthusiasts a fun, easy-to-use, Web-based tool to personally contribute to the building and updating of online map data for the country.

The first batch of local Map Maker edits was pushed to Google Maps last March, covering a substantial part of Metro Manila and provinces such as Rizal, Cebu, Davao, Guimaras and Iloilo.