In response to the #MyGoogleMapsStory challenge initiated by Connect Moderator @TusharSuradkar ji, I thought to share a brief summary of the times my journey in life was influenced in some way by Google Maps, and most importantly, how it started.
Maps & Me
I absolutely do not intend to pose like a bragger, so pardon please when I say that I might be one of the Local Guides in India who carries one of the earliest digital footprints in this platform. As an inquisitive nerd during my school days in the decade of 2000s, I had always carried some passion about the concept of maps and the art of mapping on a geographic grid, since I was a kid. I guess it all started with a comic strip of Tintin (created by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, and very popular literary character among kids in Bengal, India), where I first came across the concept of Maps, as Tintin and his team was using a handwritten one in search of the ancestral treasure trove of one of his associates. I think this was the moment when I developed my love for maps, that was later emphasized by the geography syllabus in mid-school where we learnt about this concept in depth, dealing with arithmetic problems involving latitude and longitude, time zone conversions, as well as map pointing which included identifying both present-day cities of interest and historical towns of past glory.
First Days on Google Maps
As I came across the concept of internet surfing back around 2007, a new horizon was unleashed in front of me in terms of an avid learner. While sites like Wikipedia helped me gain broader perceptions on topics I was studying on a closed-quarters textbook, sites like Miniclip introduced into the earlier days of online gaming, it was Google Maps that garnered my attention for being the getaway for a virtual exploration of the world, by just dragging the fat, white cursor, sometimes painfully, in all directions, while scrolling up or down to control the zoom. Coming from a lower middle-class family in India, going on a trip was like a rare affair for me, maybe having one packaged trip to the North-East India or Kashmir or Andaman or Rajasthan, once every three years. Foreign trips were out of discussion or affordability, hence, I found solace in Google Maps, toggling into the Satellite mode, then traversing through the cities abroad, searching one place of interest at a time, then reading a brief preview on it.
Travel with Google Earth
With the Google Earth, I could turn on street view at limited places inititally such as New York, then explore the glamorous Times Square, or click through the road through Big Ben leading to Westminster Abbey in London. For the history lessons also, I used to surf the Maps location regarding the specific, famous/infamous places from the textbook, in order to analyze the geographic significance of such location in terms of its position on the planet, and how it could attract the rich pieces of historical activities that shaped the fate of humankind eventually across the eras.
The Map Maker program
One little piece of information I wanted to share at this point that I used to be a little upset back in those days, that while the places in the first-world nations in the West or Far East used to have detailed, accurate information on Google Maps, there was little or almost no information on the spots of interest in my city of Kolkata (or, for that matter, across India). Even the roads in my own neighborhood were drawn inaccurately in my neighborhood on Maps. Note that this was late 2000s or early 2010s when Google Map Maker was in its early days, and there were only a handful of map enthusiasts who were a part of this program in this part of the world, dedicated to fix the data on maps as volunteers.
Google Local Guides
It was finally in 2015, when the Google Local Guides program kicked in. It appeared as the better, convenient version of the Map Maker, where anyone with a Google account can literally navigate to any place on earth, and add a review, upload an image or edit available information on the screen. Mapping became far easier with the advent of budget smartphones around the same time, that brought everything into one’s palms. With the strict compliance criteria set by Google, it guided Local Guides to follow the rules about submitting original content on places only which they have physically visited, and not spam the Maps with incorrect, incomplete, irrelevant or plagiarized content. In time, this platform evolved with adding more facilities for the Local Guides contributors such as uploading videos, grabbing badges by completing certain targets, mapping roads, answering Q&A, adding detailed data on hospitals or restaurants, reporting spam contents and most importantly, promoting accessibility and sustainability principles on Maps, which eventually made the service industry empathetic who implemented such requirements to make the world more inclusive.
Caption: My Google Local Guides Contributions (till April 2023)
Further Integrations
With the integration of Google My Business, business owners - ranging from small businesses to established brands, could establish their authority on Maps to showcase their business in their own ways, with accurate information on the net such as business hours, address, promotional offers, price offerings etc. As this Local Guides Connect forum was introduced as successor of the Google Plus Local Guides communities, the millions of Local Guides across the world got their own dedicated social media platform to put up their years of work on Google Maps, as well as their local culture in front of the world!
10 Years as a Local Guide
Finally, the Local Guides program brought a purpose in my life, from the very first day I was introduced to this program in a fine 2016 October afternoon while meeting multiple-times Connect Live attendee Local Guides contributor @DrShaunak for an informal conversation session at the Mani Square Mall, Kolkata, close to my college. Since then, I have made around 30K contributions on my Google Maps profile, garnering around 130K points, climbing up to the 10th Level, grabbing 48.5 million photo views, learning from mistakes, picking up lessons and experience from the words of fellow Local Guides in India and around the world, focusing on contributing quality content as well as reporting spam, that would eventually help an end user, searching some place on their Google Maps app, to attain accurate, valuable and thorough information.
In these 10 years, I have attended 50+ physical meetups across Kolkata, Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon; joined numerous virtual meetups; hosted a precious few including co-hosting the 2019 Asia One Summit. Not only these events helped me get in touch with some of the great minds in the country, who has illustrated absolute brilliance in the way they engaged into this project with various themes and challenges over time, the Local Guides program of the Google Maps helped to grow a brief insight into the technology behind digital map-making, as well as the modern concepts of crowdsourcing and digital marketing.
My First Local Guides Meetup - December 2016: Kolkata Photowalk - Victoria Memorial & College Street
My Latest Local Guides Meetup - June 2025: Metropolitan Durga Bari Cultural Heritage Walk
Conclusion
I think I have already put forward how Google Maps helped me like a Genie out of the bottle during my budding days, years before actually helping on the move with finding out routes or for searching shops and hotels across multiple cities and tourist attractions across several Indian states such as Madhya Pradesh, Delhi NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Odisha and of course, West Bengal. I would like to acknowledge one final thanks to @TusharSuradkar ji for igniting the fire in me to write down so much in Local Guides forum, after a while, and also to all the Local Guides who are reading this, for giving your precious time going through my journey on Google Maps.
.
Дякую.
Danke!