Google on Thursday announced a new India-first feature on Maps where users can access their current location to find the Plus Codes address for their home.
Plus Codes are free, open-sourced, digital addresses that provide simple and accurate addresses for any place on Earth, including for places that don’t have accurate formal addresses.
“We piloted this feature in India a month ago, and are thrilled to share that over 300,000 users in India have already found their home’s address using Plus Codes. We are looking forward to expanding to more types of places,” Amanda Bishop, Product Manager, Google Maps said in a statement.
Since its launch in 2018, Plus Codes have been adopted at scale by NGOs in India and governments as it serves the addressing needs of millions of people.
Instead of street and locality names, Plus Codes are based on latitude and longitude and are displayed as a short sequence of numbers and letters, providing accuracy right up to the doorstep, the brand claims.
When saving a ‘Home’ location on Google Maps, users in India will see a new ‘Use your current location’ that uses their phone’s location to generate a Plus Code (if the location precision meets minimum thresholds,) which they can then use as their Home address.
There is also a new section at the top of the “Saved” tab to make it easier to retrieve, copy, and share these home addresses. The feature is currently available on Android only, with iOS to follow soon.
