City Landmarks icons on Google Maps

[SebaasC]

Hi  hope you all are doing great.

I don't know if this change is new or from a long time ago, but I have recently noticed that in the world most important cities ( only on these, not in my city for example) the featured places such as monuments, theaters, stadiums and many other have  a distinctive icon really very similar to the original, very well achieved , Wich allows to identify these places much more easier.

Buenos Aires, Lima, Rio de Janeiro y México DF with the distinctive icons.

Have you seen these before or is something new?

Thanks!

[LaloPadilla]

La primera vez que ví los íconos me sorprendió de buea forma, me agrada mucho que destaquen los lugares mas emblemáticos de las ciudades, así los turistas saben a que lugares ir (y los locales, los lugares que hay que evitar por lo concurrido 😂)

[SebaasC]

Hola Lalo, como estás?

Che , pero esto es nuevo de ahora o vos ya lo habías visto antes en el D.F.?

A mí me parece buenísima la producción de los iconos muy parecidos a las construcciones reales y concuerdo con lo que vos decís.

@LaloPadilla 

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @SebaasC

I have seen them. Also here in Copenhagen. Icons in black and white that are larger (often wider) than other icons. They resemble how the places/buildings look 

I believe they have been around for at least a month now. Maybe two.

Cheers 

Morten 

[SebaasC]

Thanks for the feedback Morten.

I think they are awesome.

@MortenCopenhagen 

[MortenCopenhagen]

I think you are the first to comment on these new landmark icons here on Connect.  Nice catch @SebaasC. 

Maybe @JanVanHaver would like them on his list of news to be mentioned in his podcast 😉

Cheers

Morten

[Amiran]

Hello @SebaasC 

Yes these are really nice icons.

This feature started about one year ago for most known places like Eiffel Tower and Buckingham Palace; the type of the icons was a little bit different.

Some months later and amid Covid-19 pandemic Google changed the icons and made them larger and also gray. Also the process of adding new icons was slow. Since more than two months ago, Google extended these icon to even more locations and now many landmarks in the world has an special icon that is designed based on the building. Although many landmarks still don't have icon and we're waiting to see their amazing new face 🙂

I was thought the gray color should be due to the pandemic and closure of most tourist attractions. But now, I'm not sure if Google will colorize these tourism icons again or not.

Also as I know, this icon designing started as a result of AR mode of the app since it helps people to find a landmark better when they're using AR for walking. Although it is still very useful in the general use of the map and makes it easier to find top landmarks.

Another amazing thing about this feature is that when you search the name of a city, and system highlights its borders, it also makes the icons of top landmarks visible simultaneously.  

And one final thing I should say is that if you have some landmarks in one of your visible lists, you may find the special icon is not stable and it appear and disappear sometimes.

[JanVanHaver]

Thanks for the tag @MortenCopenhagen .

Don't we all love new features @SebaasC ? 😊  As @Amiran mentioned, the feature is not new as such, as I had also seen it before on some very high-profile tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower. But it does seem to spread to a lot more places now, so that is definitely newsworthy (and wil certainly make it to the news section of an upcoming podcast episode)

[SebaasC]

Thanks for the response @JanVanHaver  and @Amiran  and for the further information.

As these feature was only roll out for the landmarks on big cities , I assume that many people like me didn't know their existense, but because we/they didn't search more often in this cities map, and even more now that we don't have de possibility to travel abroad as always.

[Tushar_Suradkar]

Agree with @MortenCopenhagen 👍

@SebaasC I have been noticing these special icons for about a month or two now... so cool... 😊