Today, Google announced that the Map Maker tool, which let users add information and suggest changes to Google Maps, will be retired in March 2017. The editing and feature suggestion features it offered will be migrated to the main Google Maps app as part of the company's Local Guides program, which rewards people for policing and improving their community's local mapping data by allowing access to beta features and free Google Drive storage.
Map Maker originally started in 2008 as a way to gather information from rural areas that Google's tool couldn't do on its own. Over time, the community of Map Maker editors and moderators, tasked with overseeing and approving changes to Google Maps' public data, grew to millions of users.
Some Map Maker users with the behaviors they had managed to get the tool updated with new features in the public version of Google Maps, including the ability to add new places and describe existing locations in more detail.
However, the Map Maker community has undoubtedly had its fair share of “bad guys.” The most high-profile incident occurred last year, when a Map Maker user created an Android robot that urinated (oups!) on the Apple logo .The incident led to the Map Maker tool being temporarily suspended and Google looking into ways to mitigate and control these incidents.
Now by leveraging the Local Guides rewards program instead of allowing anyone to submit changes, the Maps team may see some increase in helpful comments, location changes, and user-generated information!
