Use Google Maps To Avoid Crowded Places And Stay Safe: Here's How

With Unlock-1 coming into force in various states of our country, things are opening at a gradual pace.

However, this clearly doesn¡¯t mean that we can go living our lives like we used to, and social distancing is a must.

Reuters

COVID-19 is still very much present in the world as deadly as it was, and still a threat to our way of life. Despite having to repeat this, social distancing is our only weapon against this disease.

But what about times when we may reach places that are overly crowded without realising.To put ourselves away from harm¡¯s way, Google Maps had introduced a pretty nifty feature last year.

Dubbed Crowdedness Predictions, this Google Maps feature warns people if a particular place or public transport will be crowded at a particular time. And this feature is active in India too!

Google / Reuters

Google Maps crowd prediction

All the user needs to do is check the directions of the place on Google Maps. Under this, tap to see Transit Details. Scrolling down further will show you an option called ¡®crowdedness predictions¡¯.

The feature is a part of its most recent update on both Android and iOS platforms. With this feature, the map will now be able to show you real-time information of crowd gathering in specific location so you can pick another timeframe to visit that place or cancel the plan entirely in case that¡¯s not possible.

Reuters

Google uses its ¡®crowdedness prediction¡¯ model that understands the movement of people in a particular place or level of crowd in public transport. The app also includes the feature for the user to update the information to get more accurate predictions.

Google Maps data privacy

In case you were worrying about the privacy of your data, you¡¯d be glad to know that Google is relying on anonymised data for these features.

Google states in its official blog post, ¡°These capabilities are powered by aggregated and anonymized data from users who have opted into Google Location History, a Google account-level setting that is off by default. To protect privacy, these insights are only surfaced when we have sufficient data to meet privacy thresholds,¡±