My Google Map Blog

Editor's note: Sandrine Lescourant, also known as Mufasa, is an award-winning hip-hop and contemporary dancer in Paris. Today, she shares why she wanted to use Street View as a stage for dance. 

When I see videos of myself dancing, it’s hard to imagine that person was once a shy girl from the outskirts of Paris. Thanks to hip-hop, I’ve found my path, and now I seek to help others do the same by encouraging them to use dance as a vehicle for expression. 

When Google’s Street View team asked if I’d like to show Paris and its iconic Gare de Lyon train station with the world through the lens of dance, I immediately said yes. 

In this image collection, there are 360-degree images of me and my little sister, Jade Fehlmann, as we dance to Tismé Beats through the Gare de Lyon train station. Bringing our energy and creativity to these places was an unforgettable experience.

This year marks the Gare de Lyon train station’s 170th anniversary, reminding us that for nearly two centuries it has been a place that connects people to different places, new experiences and each other. Every time I’m here, I’m inspired by how people move through the space and the energy inside of it. 

Not only does this collection give a sneak peek into this Parisian landmark, but it also gives a glimpse into what dance means to a woman like me. I use dance to fight against injustice and create hope and unity. I wish to help the next generation of dancers find the beauty in themselves and the world around them through dance.

I hope you enjoy seeing my friends and I dance through Gare De Lyon in Street View. If there's a place that matters to you, you can add your own Street View imagery to Google Maps to show the world your view. 

French fries, lettuce wraps, massaman curry, chicken wings, cupcakes—I could go on. When I was pregnant with my son last year, my cravings were completely overpowering. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to jump into the car and go to my favorite restaurants to get my fill—food delivery services saved my bacon on more occasions than I’d be comfortable admitting to the world.

Ever since then, I’ve counted myself as one of the millions of people who regularly order food for home delivery. Starting today, we’re making it even easier to get food delivered to your doorstep.

Find food and order faster
Now you can use Google Search, Maps or the Assistant to order food from services like DoorDash, Postmates, Delivery.com, Slice, and ChowNow, with Zuppler and others coming soon. Look out for the “Order Online” button in Search and Maps when you search for a restaurant or type of cuisine. For participating restaurants, you can make your selections with just a few taps, view delivery or pickup times, and check out with Google Pay.  

Let the Google Assistant handle dinner
To use the Assistant on your phone to get your food fix, simply say, “Hey Google, order food from [restaurant].” You can also quickly reorder your go-to meal with some of our delivery partners by saying, “Hey Google, reorder food from [restaurant].” The Assistant pulls up your past orders, and in just a few seconds, you can select your usual dish.

Now's the perfect time to let Google help with your cravings. So, what are we ordering tonight?

Whether you still live with mom or are a roadtrip away, Google Maps can help you get things done so you can make the most of Mother’s Day (less than two weeks away!). Here are a few helpful features in Maps to try out to make that second Sunday in May a real mom-pleaser.  

Mother’s Day brunch, without the wait

Mother’s Day brunch has always been a thing. And lately, brunch every weekend has become an even bigger thing. Standing in line for hours for those delicious eggs benny you promised your mom could really put a damper on the day. With Google Maps, you can add yourself to a participating restaurant’s waitlist and get a text when your table's ready. Instead of waiting in line, use the time instead to stroll around a nearby park and get mum caught up on your new hobbies (or maybe even your love life). If you’re more of a planner, you can always book a reservation in advance from a restaurant’s Business Profile in Maps and Search, too.

Bring out her inner kid

If you were a lucky kid, your mom probably spent a good chunk of her free time planning fun and educational outings to help your little mind expand. This Mother's Day, show your mom how thankful you are for all of those excursions by bringing her back to the places she used to take you. Just find the aquarium, zoo, or any other place that brings back fond memories and tap the “buy tickets” button to make it happen.

Take a walk down memory lane

If mom is the nostalgic type, you can create a list in Maps highlighting all the favorite places you’ve visited together over the years. Create a custom scavenger hunt to guide her to each place, or just visit a few of them during the day to remember all the fun you had and make new memories. Even if you don't get to all of the spots on Mother's Day, you can share the list with her directly from Maps, so you can pick up where you left off next time you're together.

Even though Mother’s Day comes only once a year, don’t forget to add a label to mom’s address in Maps, so you can easily get real-time ETA and directions every time you head home for a visit.

Whether you’re looking for the latest news or the quickest driving route, we aim to make our products helpful for everyone. And when you turn on settings like Location History or Web & App Activity, the data can make Google products more useful for you—like recommending a restaurant that you might enjoy, or helping you pick up where you left off on a previous search. We work to keep your data private and secure, and we’ve heard your feedback that we need to provide simpler ways for you to manage or delete it.

You can already use your Google Account to access simple on/off controls for Location History and Web & App Activity, and if you choose—to delete all or part of that data manually. In addition to these options, we’re announcing auto-delete controls that make it even easier to manage your data. Here’s how they’ll work:

Choose a time limit for how long you want your activity data to be saved—3 or 18 months—and any data older than that will be automatically deleted from your account on an ongoing basis. These controls are coming first to Location History and Web & App Activity and will roll out in the coming weeks.

You should always be able to manage your data in a way that works best for you--and we’re committed to giving you the best controls to make that happen.

Today we’re introducing several updates to Google Earth Timelapse, a global, zoomable time-lapse video that lets anyone explore the last 35 years of our changing planet’s surface—from the global scale to the local scale. This update adds two additional years of imagery to the time-series visualization, now spanning from 1984 to 2018, along with mobile support and visual upgrades to make exploring more accessible and intuitive.

Timelapse provides a comprehensive picture of our changing Earth—including stunning phenomena like the sprouting of Dubai’s Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada (seen below).

Scientists, documentarians and journalists have used this dataset to help us better understand the complex dynamics at work on our planet. News outlets have brought their reporting to life with Timelapse imagery, from coverage of the floods in Houston, Texas to population monitoring. Recently, a team of scientists at the University of Ottawa published an article Nature based on the Timelapse dataset which revealed a 6,000 percent increase in landslides on a Canadian Arctic island since 1984. Starting this week, if you’re in the U.K., you can see Timelapse imagery featured in Earth From Space, a new BBC series about the incredible discoveries and perspectives captured from above. 

Using Google Earth Engine, Google's cloud platform for petabyte-scale geospatial analysis, we combined more than 15 million satellite images (roughly 10 quadrillion pixels) to create the 35 global cloud-free images that make up Timelapse. These images come from the U.S. Geological Survey/NASA Landsat and European Sentinel programs. Once again, we joined forces with our friends at Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab, whose Time Machine video technology makes Timelapse interactively explorable.

Today's update also adds mobile and tablet support, making it a little easier for you to explore, research or get lost in the imagery—from wherever you are. Up until recently, mobile browsers disabled the ability to autoplay videos, which is critical for Timelapse (since it’s made up of tens of millions of multi-resolution, overlapping videos). Chrome and Firefox reinstated support for autoplay (with sound muted), so we’ve added mobile support with this latest update.

The design of the new Timelapse interface leverages Material Design with simple, clean lines and clear focal areas, so you can easily navigate the immense dataset. We contributed this new user interface to the open-source Time Machine project, used by Carnegie Mellon and others. Read more about our design approach at Google Design.

We’re committed to creating products like Timelapse with the planet in mind, and hope that making this data easily accessible will ground debates, encourage discovery, and inform the global community’s thinking about how we live on our planet. Get started with Timelapse on the Earth Engine website, or take a mesmerizing tour of the world through YouTube.

If you’ve ever driven to an electric vehicle (EV) charging station only to find that all ports are occupied, you know that you could end up waiting in line for anywhere between minutes to hours—which can really put a damper on your day when you have places to go and things to do.

You can search for real time EV charging information on Google Maps on desktop, Android, iOS and on Google Maps for Android Auto. To get started, update your Google Maps app from the App Store or Play Store.

In Australia’s Top End, you will find the country’s largest national park: Kakadu National Park. Covering almost 20,000 square kilometers (about half the size of Switzerland) and with terrain encompassing wetlands, rivers and sandstone escarpments, it’s home to the world’s oldest living culture with more than a dozen Indigenous groups. One-third of Australia’s bird species, an estimated 10,000 crocodiles and approximately 2,000 plant species can also be found in the Park.

Considered a living cultural landscape, Kakadu National Park’s geological history spans more than two billion years. The Park is a place that boasts extraordinary archaeological sites that record the skills and ways of life of the region’s Aboriginal people, whose culture stretches back more than 65,000 years. The Street View journey captures a glimpse of this world, uncovering rock art galleries and stunning vistas across eight sites.

Viewers can journey to Ubirr for incredible 360-degree views, or to take a look at rock art galleries that record animal life in the region going back thousands of years. This includes a painting of a thylacine—or Tasmanian Tiger—depicted before they became extinct on the mainland around 2,000 years ago.

You can also meander through towering sandstone pillars at Bardedjilidji, travel to Nawurlandja for world-class panoramas across Anbangbang Billabong and the Arnhem Land escarpment, and toward Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) where you can view rock art galleries, before cooling off in the pristine plunge pools at Maguk or Gunlom (one of the most popular sites for travellers looking to take a refreshing dip), then diving into Kakadu’s big waterfalls: Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls.

This journey through Kakadu National Park is a continuation of our work with Traditional Owners, Tourism Northern Territory and Parks Australia to record and share sacred sites, and instill greater value and respect for the land—which began in 2017 with Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park.

Visit Kakadu National Park, dual-listed by UNESCO World Heritage for both its natural and cultural significance, on Google Street View to learn more about the world’s oldest living culture and their connection with the land.