Google Maps will get even more useful with the help of those Street View cars

Google Maps is about to get a whole lot more accurate. (Good timing, Google Maps!)

Google announced in a research blog post on Wednesday that the company plans to automatically update Maps with clearly visible street names, numbers, and businesses, gathered with the help of Street View technology.

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The update comes from researchers with Google's "Ground Truth" team, which works to enable extraction of information —businesses' names from store fronts, for example — from the street view imagery and use it to improve Google Maps.

The new algorithm achieves 84.2% accuracy on a dataset of French Street Name Signs, a significant improvement from the previous systems.

Credit: google

In the example above, the system was able to correctly extract the business's name, Zelina Pneus, despite the Bridgestone and Firestone logos above.

The new system allows Google to create addresses directly from images, so that when a Street View car drives on a new road, the system can automatically extract street names and numbers and create the new addresses on Google Maps. Combining this with technology to extract business names, the company can create or update listings based on the data collected by the Street View vehicles. All the better to find whatever it is you're looking for.