Google Maps is a desktop and mobile web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, offering satellite imagery, street maps, and Street View perspectives, as well as functions such as a route planner for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (beta test), or with public transportation. Also supported are maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API,^[1] and a locator for urban businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Maps satellite images are not updated in real time; however, Google adds data to their Primary Database on a regular basis. Google Earth support states that most of the images are no more than 3 years old.^[2]

The opt-in redesigned version of the desktop application has been available since 2013, alongside the "classic" (pre-2013) version. The redesigned version was met by user criticism regarding slowness,^[3] hiding some common functions, removing a scale bar, and lack of other features that include My Places and sharable customized links to parameterized split Street View and Map views.^[4] It is possible to switch back to the old version.^[5]

Google Maps uses a close variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore cannot accurately show areas around the poles. A related product is Google Earth, a stand-alone program which offers more globe-viewing features, including showing polar areas.

Google Maps for mobile is the world's most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once during the month of August 2013.^[6]