Google unveils free navigation app

Google unveiled its own free navigation application, called Google Maps Navigation that offers spoken turn-by-turn directions and will likely challenge incumbents in the location-based services such as those from TeleNav and TomTom.

The application is only available for phones running on the Android 2.0 OS, which debuted today with the Motorola Droid, which Verizon Wireless is rolling out Nov. 6.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the way smartphones are evolving, creating the app simply made sense. "The mobile platforms, Android and the others, are so powerful now that you can build client apps that do magical things, that are connected to the cloud," he told reporters at a briefing earlier this week. "This is the most visually obvious example of that." Google Maps Navigation is an extension of the company's existing Google Maps for mobile application, which offers maps and directions but not spoken, turn-by-turn navigation.

Schmidt also noted the price of the application--nothing--and said it likely would go over well with users. "As long as you are on the side of consumers, you'll be fine," he said.

For more:
- see this video
- see this Google blog post
- see this NYT article

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