5 ms·

Google's Street View starts mapping India

42 points by Garbage 15y ago

ankimal 15y ago
Given the traffic snarls and developing infrastructure, I would love to know how many months or years it ll take them to get this done. My other concern is whether they ll be able to cope up with India's changing infrastructure. New bridges, buildings, housing complexes come up every year, traffic patterns change to accomodate the same and most big cities have a metro under construction. Changing maps is one thing, but re-mapping street view is quite another.
- petervandijck 15y ago
  Interestingly, I was discussing this with some people while in India two years ago. It turns out that a lot of houses don't really have addresses. A lot of alleys don't have street names. A lot of buildings just get built, and there's not always an official address for them. So it would definitely be interesting, yes.
  - tekgo 15y ago
    Google actually came up with landmark-based directions specifically for India( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-maps-india-learns-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-ma... ), but if you do not have an official address I guess one would have to settle for a nearby intersection or business.
- ajju 15y ago
  The good thing for a project like this in India is that labor is relatively cheap. Hiring semi-skilled technicians / drivers to drive the street view camera van will probably not cost much. Back of the envelope calculation: ~3M Km of roads (urban and rural) - Assuming avg speed of 30KM/hr, that is 100,000 man hours of work just to record the data. - Double the estimate to accomodate 2 person teams (driver and technician). 200,000 man hours. - 50 Rs/hour on average would probably be decent pay for a driver/technician that's semiskilled. (Rs 12000/month with an 8 hour workday). 50 Rs > $1. So, let's say $1 per hour. - Total cost for recording ALL urban and rural roads excluding state and national highways: $200,000 That's probably around the annual salary of one Sr. engineer at Google in Mountain View. They could afford to do it multiple times a year. This doesn't consider the cost of processing this data but Google being Google, I am sure they have automated tools that convert these recordings into Street view quite cheaply. Computing power is their cheapest resource. Improving the estimate: - There's also the cost of equipment. It would take 1000 teams 12 working days (~100 hours) each to record data. If you have a little more than a month you only need 333 teams, and so on. Also I bet they are only doing cities first, so they could probably do with 100 teams at a time. Let's say the equipment is USD $2K per team. That's $200,000 in equipment. I am guessing they can do it for much cheaper since they are likely reusing equipment across countries. - There's the cost of renting the auto-rickshaws. Looks like the 'retail' rate for an auto-rickshaw trip is about Rs 12 per KM (all inclusive) for short trips. Since we are paying the driver separately, 12 per KM may be excessive for the rickshaw + gas, but let's use it anyway. That's Another Rs 12,00,000 = ~$24,000 Updated total cost: $424,000 Imagine if you were a startup in India circa 2007 when street view launched in the U.S. If you had the technical chops to build tools for street view, it would have been a no-brainer to invest this kind of money and get the data. Google, Microsoft or Yahoo would have happily paid 10x to acquire the startup.
  - gt5050 15y ago
    There is already a startup doing somewhat similar http://www.vidteq.com/ http://www.vidteq.com/
    - ajju 15y ago
      That's great. Didn't know that.
  - jfeldstein2 15y ago
    You know they developed self-driving cars for a reason, right?
    - ajju 15y ago
      If they use them in India and have the same safety record (no at-fault accidents), I'll start suspecting they have sentient A.I.
    - geekzgalore 15y ago
      You need to check Indian traffic to understand why self-driven cars cannot be used.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  I haven't been here that long, but from what I've seen, Google doesn't even have up to date maps in India. I went jogging a few days ago, and ran into what google maps described as a dead end. The road didn't stop - it just continued through some "undocumented housing" in dirt road form. Google has their work cut out for them.
jabo 15y ago
Those "tri-cycles" that the articles mentions are called "autos" in India. They are usually used as taxis. It's interesting how Google chose to use them rather than a car! A good example of localization!
- ankimal 15y ago
  Wait, I thought the tri-cycles were cycle rickshaws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw Now those babies will get you through all the back-alleys and streets in no time. The only problem would be mounting their camera on it. I think they ve solved harder problems.
  - pequ 15y ago
    IIRC, what they call auto (or auto rikshaw) is the motorized rikshaw. Both are tri-cycle.
    - xtacy 15y ago
      Yes, they're called auto/auto rickshaw. In some parts of the country, autos (drivers) are notorious for their road navigation skills.
- jagtesh 15y ago
  They are not using autos! It's a "trike" that's manually driven by the rider. If you notice carefully in the original article, there are no cameras above the auto. http://googleindia.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-street-view-start-of-driving-in.html http://googleindia.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-street-view-s... http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/18/google-street-view-t.html http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/18/google-street-view-... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-4Aln1Il8&playnext=1&list=PL98DA918472BB3131 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-4Aln1Il8&playnext=1&#3...
bgraves 15y ago
I love Street View and cannot believe I'm living in a time and place in history that makes it possible to see such a massive amount of culture and everyday life from virtually anywhere in the world. One question I've had since Street View was first released is how does this make business sense for Google? I can see how it relates to Google's stated mission statement ("to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"). But how can Google justify spending vast amounts of cash on what seems to be a glorified pet project? Is it simply a desire to build the best mapping service, thereby attracting visitors and eventually generating advertising revenue? btw, I'm not trolling or flaming -- it's been a genuine curiosity of mine for years now.
- tsycho 15y ago
  I don't have an answer to your actual question about Google's motivations here, but I do think Street View is valuable, and what's genuinely valuable for users, eventually leads to money for the provider. However, I am genuinely curious why you had to qualify your very reasonable question with a "I am not trolling or flaming". I have noticed many other commenters do this recently, and don't understand the need for qualifying yourself if you have a genuine question. Btw, I am not trolling or... ;)
  - bgraves 15y ago
    Yes, I agree that it's valuable and will eventually lead to revenue. Perhaps the "mystery" stops right there. Sometimes it can be difficult to clearly communicate in short forum-style posts. I don't always qualify my posts, but in this case, I didn't want HN readers to think my posts boiled down to ripping on this Google Street View announcement. I should let my posts speak for themselves and work on being more concise. ;) I feel like there's been an increase in this type of behavior since points were removed from individual posts.
- qq66 15y ago
  If you think about all the hype around "local," Street View is a massive and near-impossible to duplicate asset in that battle. With some good image recognition of signs, people, etc. Google could map out specific business locations, exact address locations, which combined with real-time location information from mobile Maps users can make Google Maps basically undefeatable (and it has a solid business model). Google can afford to play the "long game."
pitdesi 15y ago
This is very interesting, and I LOVE that Google is doing it. I use google maps to make sure that a rickshaw/taxi driver isn't ripping me off by going the wrong/long way. It has come in handy for me several times in India. The real trouble in India is addresses. When I lived in India my official address was 3rd Floor Pran Vijay / Near H K House Lane / Opposite Bata Showroom / Income Tax Colony / Ashram Road / Navrangpura Ahmedabad-380009 How the hell will Gmaps figure that out? Will we just start using lat/long coordinates?
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  Income Tax Colony?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - bdhe 15y ago
    Income Tax Colony? Lot of companies in India both public and private, including the govt. have subsidized housing adjacent to the office buildings. They're often called colonies. A lot of the times, these subsidized housing options are open to the public as well, maybe at higher rates. This might be one instance relating to the IT (Income Tax) Dept.
varunsrin 15y ago
yes mapping India will prove to be quite the challenge - there are a lot of roads and alleys that are undocumented. Interestingly, the street my old house was on never shows up in Google, shows up on Yahoo (but is unnamed) & shows up named on Bing. I've noticed such discrepancies with other small streets and alleys as well Which leads me to wonder - how do companies gather map data (as in street names, building names etc) ? Do they do it manually or parse existing maps?

42 points by Garbage 15y ago

Given the traffic snarls and developing infrastructure, I would love to know how many months or years it ll take them to get this done. My other concern is whether they ll be able to cope up with India's changing infrastructure. New bridges, buildings, housing complexes come up every year, traffic patterns change to accomodate the same and most big cities have a metro under construction. Changing maps is one thing, but re-mapping street view is quite another.

petervandijck 15y ago
Interestingly, I was discussing this with some people while in India two years ago. It turns out that a lot of houses don't really have addresses. A lot of alleys don't have street names. A lot of buildings just get built, and there's not always an official address for them. So it would definitely be interesting, yes.
- tekgo 15y ago
  Google actually came up with landmark-based directions specifically for India( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-maps-india-learns-to.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-ma... ), but if you do not have an official address I guess one would have to settle for a nearby intersection or business.
ajju 15y ago
The good thing for a project like this in India is that labor is relatively cheap. Hiring semi-skilled technicians / drivers to drive the street view camera van will probably not cost much. Back of the envelope calculation: ~3M Km of roads (urban and rural) - Assuming avg speed of 30KM/hr, that is 100,000 man hours of work just to record the data. - Double the estimate to accomodate 2 person teams (driver and technician). 200,000 man hours. - 50 Rs/hour on average would probably be decent pay for a driver/technician that's semiskilled. (Rs 12000/month with an 8 hour workday). 50 Rs > $1. So, let's say $1 per hour. - Total cost for recording ALL urban and rural roads excluding state and national highways: $200,000 That's probably around the annual salary of one Sr. engineer at Google in Mountain View. They could afford to do it multiple times a year. This doesn't consider the cost of processing this data but Google being Google, I am sure they have automated tools that convert these recordings into Street view quite cheaply. Computing power is their cheapest resource. Improving the estimate: - There's also the cost of equipment. It would take 1000 teams 12 working days (~100 hours) each to record data. If you have a little more than a month you only need 333 teams, and so on. Also I bet they are only doing cities first, so they could probably do with 100 teams at a time. Let's say the equipment is USD $2K per team. That's $200,000 in equipment. I am guessing they can do it for much cheaper since they are likely reusing equipment across countries. - There's the cost of renting the auto-rickshaws. Looks like the 'retail' rate for an auto-rickshaw trip is about Rs 12 per KM (all inclusive) for short trips. Since we are paying the driver separately, 12 per KM may be excessive for the rickshaw + gas, but let's use it anyway. That's Another Rs 12,00,000 = ~$24,000 Updated total cost: $424,000 Imagine if you were a startup in India circa 2007 when street view launched in the U.S. If you had the technical chops to build tools for street view, it would have been a no-brainer to invest this kind of money and get the data. Google, Microsoft or Yahoo would have happily paid 10x to acquire the startup.
- gt5050 15y ago
  There is already a startup doing somewhat similar http://www.vidteq.com/ http://www.vidteq.com/
  - ajju 15y ago
    That's great. Didn't know that.
- jfeldstein2 15y ago
  You know they developed self-driving cars for a reason, right?
  - ajju 15y ago
    If they use them in India and have the same safety record (no at-fault accidents), I'll start suspecting they have sentient A.I.
  - geekzgalore 15y ago
    You need to check Indian traffic to understand why self-driven cars cannot be used.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
I haven't been here that long, but from what I've seen, Google doesn't even have up to date maps in India. I went jogging a few days ago, and ran into what google maps described as a dead end. The road didn't stop - it just continued through some "undocumented housing" in dirt road form. Google has their work cut out for them.

jabo 15y ago

Those "tri-cycles" that the articles mentions are called "autos" in India. They are usually used as taxis. It's interesting how Google chose to use them rather than a car! A good example of localization!

ankimal 15y ago
Wait, I thought the tri-cycles were cycle rickshaws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw Now those babies will get you through all the back-alleys and streets in no time. The only problem would be mounting their camera on it. I think they ve solved harder problems.
- pequ 15y ago
  IIRC, what they call auto (or auto rikshaw) is the motorized rikshaw. Both are tri-cycle.
  - xtacy 15y ago
    Yes, they're called auto/auto rickshaw. In some parts of the country, autos (drivers) are notorious for their road navigation skills.
jagtesh 15y ago
They are not using autos! It's a "trike" that's manually driven by the rider. If you notice carefully in the original article, there are no cameras above the auto. http://googleindia.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-street-view-start-of-driving-in.html http://googleindia.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-street-view-s... http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/18/google-street-view-t.html http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/18/google-street-view-... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-4Aln1Il8&playnext=1&list=PL98DA918472BB3131 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-4Aln1Il8&playnext=1&#3...

bgraves 15y ago

I love Street View and cannot believe I'm living in a time and place in history that makes it possible to see such a massive amount of culture and everyday life from virtually anywhere in the world. One question I've had since Street View was first released is how does this make business sense for Google? I can see how it relates to Google's stated mission statement ("to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"). But how can Google justify spending vast amounts of cash on what seems to be a glorified pet project? Is it simply a desire to build the best mapping service, thereby attracting visitors and eventually generating advertising revenue? btw, I'm not trolling or flaming -- it's been a genuine curiosity of mine for years now.

tsycho 15y ago
I don't have an answer to your actual question about Google's motivations here, but I do think Street View is valuable, and what's genuinely valuable for users, eventually leads to money for the provider. However, I am genuinely curious why you had to qualify your very reasonable question with a "I am not trolling or flaming". I have noticed many other commenters do this recently, and don't understand the need for qualifying yourself if you have a genuine question. Btw, I am not trolling or... ;)
- bgraves 15y ago
  Yes, I agree that it's valuable and will eventually lead to revenue. Perhaps the "mystery" stops right there. Sometimes it can be difficult to clearly communicate in short forum-style posts. I don't always qualify my posts, but in this case, I didn't want HN readers to think my posts boiled down to ripping on this Google Street View announcement. I should let my posts speak for themselves and work on being more concise. ;) I feel like there's been an increase in this type of behavior since points were removed from individual posts.
qq66 15y ago
If you think about all the hype around "local," Street View is a massive and near-impossible to duplicate asset in that battle. With some good image recognition of signs, people, etc. Google could map out specific business locations, exact address locations, which combined with real-time location information from mobile Maps users can make Google Maps basically undefeatable (and it has a solid business model). Google can afford to play the "long game."

pitdesi 15y ago

This is very interesting, and I LOVE that Google is doing it. I use google maps to make sure that a rickshaw/taxi driver isn't ripping me off by going the wrong/long way. It has come in handy for me several times in India. The real trouble in India is addresses. When I lived in India my official address was 3rd Floor Pran Vijay / Near H K House Lane / Opposite Bata Showroom / Income Tax Colony / Ashram Road / Navrangpura Ahmedabad-380009 How the hell will Gmaps figure that out? Will we just start using lat/long coordinates?

Apocryphon 15y ago
Income Tax Colony?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- bdhe 15y ago
  Income Tax Colony? Lot of companies in India both public and private, including the govt. have subsidized housing adjacent to the office buildings. They're often called colonies. A lot of the times, these subsidized housing options are open to the public as well, maybe at higher rates. This might be one instance relating to the IT (Income Tax) Dept.

varunsrin 15y ago

yes mapping India will prove to be quite the challenge - there are a lot of roads and alleys that are undocumented. Interestingly, the street my old house was on never shows up in Google, shows up on Yahoo (but is unnamed) & shows up named on Bing. I've noticed such discrepancies with other small streets and alleys as well Which leads me to wonder - how do companies gather map data (as in street names, building names etc) ? Do they do it manually or parse existing maps?