We’re announcing the Preview of Grounding with Google Maps in Vertex AI, giving you access to fresh and factual information on 250 million places. Building on our experimental release, you can now augment Gemini models grounded in one of the world's most trusted sources of Maps data. With this launch, Grounding with Google Maps in Vertex AI is now available in most regions* globally, giving you full access to our worldwide Places information.

While many businesses are excited by the potential of AI, they sometimes struggle to trust the output of LLM models. Grounding these models in reliable data sources builds user confidence and increases the accuracy of the output by providing real-time factual data, richer responses, and building trust with supporting links to original sources. Some of the great benefits are:

• Create more accurate, complete, and personalized AI experiences 

• Use insights from millions of contributors to answer specific queries about a place 

• Unlock differentiated AI experiences across industries 

• Build with confidence on a unified platform

Learn more:  Blog announcement and Developers documentation

We're excited to announce that the Places UI Kit components for Autocomplete & Place Search (Javascript, Android , iOS ) are in General Availability globally! This launch builds on our GA launch of the Place Details component last month, allowing developers to connect some of our most popular services for a full search and discovery critical user journey.

Learn more Demo and GeoCast Video

On June 24, we celebrated 20 years of Google Earth. Since launching in 2005, Google Earth has helped millions of people explore our planet, better understand the forces shaping it, and turn big questions into meaningful action.

In April, we announced that Google Earth—still available at no cost—is now part of the Google Maps Platform family, joining our new geospatial analytics products to help professionals visualize and analyze the world in powerful new ways. This means professionals can access Google Earth and other Google Maps Platform tools for visualizing and analyzing geospatial data. Discover more #onEarth on the Google Earth 20th anniversary page.

The Google Earth team is thrilled to announce the start of the Experimental phase for Professional and Professional Advanced — advancing on our vision of empowering professionals around the world to drive sustainability impact.

What’s new?

Earth now offers data and tools for geospatial analysis in Professional and Professional Advanced — as well as more new features for everyone, including: 

• Rich data catalog: Access 20+ key datasets with coverage in the US, including land parcels with zoning information, household income, land surface temperature, and EV charging station locations. This includes high-impact datasets from Google Research efforts like Urban Heat Resilience and Green Light, with many more to come! 

• Layer visualization and filtering: View data layers in Earth projects, and filter on one or more attributes. 

• Expanded design capabilities: Automatic zoning information in site studies, accelerating the process of evaluating feasibility for sustainable real estate development.

• Enhanced measurement tools: Measurements and placemarks are now augmented with 3D elevation information, to provide better understanding of slope and terrain

• Purchase flows and management: Users can sign-up from Earth, onboard to GMP, and manage their plan in the Cloud console as part of a self-service billing model.

Professional and Professional Advanced are available globally across Earth’s web, iOS and Android platforms, and will remain free-of-charge during the Experimental phase.

Welcome to our new Spotlight section of our newsletter. We’re so excited to learn more about your users and hope you’ll enjoy getting to know your fellow Innovators.

A big thank you to everyone who has submitted their stories to be considered for our Google Maps Platform Innovator Spotlight! We were overwhelmed with the response, and can’t wait to continue to highlight several of you over the next few months.

Have you built something amazing with Google Maps Platform? We want to see it! We've just opened the new #innovators channel on our official Discord server as a dedicated space for members like you to connect with others, share your projects, and find inspiration.  If you're not on our Discord yet, join today and head over to the #innovators channel. We can't wait to meet you!

Our team has been hard at work brainstorming ways we can get together in person. We’d love to learn about your location preferences, please take a moment to answer this quick survey so we can work on putting together in-person events.

We have just two locations listed to start so we can determine the best way to bring Innovators together. But, we're hoping to grow our global footprint next year, adding different locations around the world to reach an even wider audience.