Map Maker Graduation: Part II

Most of our lives are local. Google has rarely been more challenged in its mission than in providing maps and local information to users in countries where there has never been any detailed digital map.

NGOs will tell you that they need good maps to help develop many of these regions but traditionally, great maps are only created once a place is already developed.

This was the motivation behind the launch of mapmaker.google.com almost a year ago, giving users the power to solve this problem for good. Today, we see that promise fulfilled as Google launches the first generation maps for the following 64 new countries and territories on maps.google.com:

American Samoa, Anguilla, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Pakistan, Reunion, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia.

On behalf of the millions of people who can now use these maps, we extend our thanks to those exceptional people who selflessly and tirelessly continue to build these maps. To get an idea of who those users are go to mapmaker.google.com and peek at the bottom right of any viewport. And if you are from one of these places, do edit the map and make it a little better for you and your neighbors.

To celebrate these maps, here are a few snapshots of before and after the Map Maker data launch: