Today, Google has announced on its site an addition of a new feature i.e Traffic conditions on the back roads. Back Roads are generally the alternative roads which you can take to avoid the highways. Since highways tend to get the major chunk of the traffic, you can take the back roads to avoid it. Google will aid you in this by providing you with the traffic situation on those back roads. This software can really come handy since its available on the mobile version of Google Maps.
The 100 million dollars question is that how Google collect this data? It seems Google has shared a bit of the answer to this questions as i found out on a blog post by Leena Rao on TechCrunch. Below is what she added:
Google says that this feature can also be accessed on Google Maps for Mobile, which is particularly useful when trying to figure out the best route on the go. Google also shed a little bit of light as to how they crowdsource traffic info via Google Maps on mobile phones. When you enable Google Maps with My Location, the phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving. When Google combines your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, they can get an idea of traffic live conditions. They continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers.Google assures users that they only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when the user has opted to enable location services on his or her phone.
