Google announces free in-car navigation for Android 2.0

Google may not have surprised anyone with yesterday’s unveiling of Android 2.0, but today’s announcement of its new navigation application for the new version of its smartphone operating system came completely out of the blue.

Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 builds upon the mobile Maps application that’s been available for both the iPhone and Android devices for some time, but this version adds the same turn-by-turn navigation found on dedicated devices from the likes of TomTom and Garmin. The kicker is that Google will be providing this service for free — and both TomTom and Garmin’s

have nose-dived as a result.

Google Maps 2.0 (as we’ll call it) does away with local map storage and instead pulls its data from the cloud. This means that maps are always up to date and can include additional data like live traffic reports and other location sensitive information — something as mundane as a notification about a nearby concert venue turfing out could save on journey time, for example.

The demos show Google Maps 2.0 searching for locations using spoken commands in plain English (handy when you’re driving), and overlaying directions on both satellite and street view maps to give a much clearer idea of where you’re going.

Although the shift from cached to cloud data has obvious advantages, there are still a few unanswered questions about Google Maps 2.0. Most obvious is how will it cope in areas where there is no 3G coverage, but mobile data use costs — particularly when the service is used abroad — is also a serious consideration.

These will no doubt be addressed in due course, but we doubt that Google Maps 2.0 will be the killer application that drives everyone to Android. As impressive as the demos look, you’ll need an Android 2.0 smartphone to use the application and not everyone will want to give up their iPhone or BlackBerry just for the sake of free sat-nav.

Despite the stock plunge it’s caused, we also doubt that Google Maps 2.0 will spell doom for dedicated navigation devices and it could just cause everyone else to up their game. Or at least that’s our hope — ‘free’ has a habit of pricing the competition out of the market and relying on a single provider for any service is seldom a recipe for excellence…

[Google]