Google is set to launch a free service for smart-phones that will combine GPS navigation, voice-activated search and real-time traffic updates.
Other telecommunication companies already offer turn-by-turn navigation systems that talk drivers through a route and run on smart-phones, although many are not free and would not offer the same connectivity to Google's massive store of data.
There is no handset on the market that runs Google's Android 2.0 operating system, required by the new application, although the Motorola Droid will be sold by Verizon Wireless next week. Google said it is "eagerly working" with Apple to bring Google Maps Navigation to the iPhone.
But CEO Eric Schmidt said Google's navigation service reflects the rapidly growing power of mobile devices, particularly when they are linked to Google's power to process data using its "cloud" of networked computers.
"The mobile platforms, Android and the others, are so powerful now that you can build client apps that do magical things, that are connected to the cloud," Schmidt told reporters in a briefing this week. "This is the most visually obvious example of that."
A Google Maps Navigation user would be able to use voice search to find a destination or other attraction and listen as the app talked the user through their route.
Even an inexact verbal search, such as "Take me to the museum with the King Tut exhibit in San Francisco," would produce meaningful results,
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said Vic Gundotra, vice president for engineering and mobile for Google.
The application would allow a driver to look ahead at traffic along the route, seeing green when the route miles ahead is clear, yellow when traffic begins to snarl. As a driver approaches a destination, the display would switch to Google's "Street View" technology so users could recognize their destination.
Analysts said the application also could offer Google significant revenue opportunities from businesses that would want to be listed on Navigation searches. There is no guarantee, however, that Google's turn-by-by-turn navigator would replaced standard windshield-mounted GPS units.
Much of the product's success will depend on the quality of its speech recognition and its graphics displays, experts said.
Will Stofega, an analyst who follows mobile phone handsets for IDC, a research firm, said there could also be safety issues if users start doing too many traffic or restaurant searches while they are driving.
"You don't want to be squinting at a cell phone display and having to take your glasses off or put them on," he said. "Some of these cell phone screens might be even smaller than the iPhone."
For people who don't have an unlimited data plan on their phone, an application like Maps Navigator could also prove costly, he said.
Apple had no comment on whether the Google service might be available for the iPhone, although Google clearly hopes it will be soon.
"Apple is clearly one of our most important partners," Gundotra said. "Millions of consumers today experience Google mobile apps on the iPhone, and so we are eagerly working with them to provide that."
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