Google Maps announced today that it has just become available on over 40 new top-level country domains, including Mongolia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and more. Country domains are an important point of access for users around the world, since the languages and results can be customized to suit the specific audience. Google Maps is now available in more than 130 countries and more than 60 languages.
Google also announced this week that Street View, its photographic interface for exploring places in three dimensions through Google Maps, is coming to the Amazon rainforest with the help of the Foundation for a Sustainable Amazon. The Google LatLong team has had a big week of international news, and their addition of weather to Google Maps yesterday rounds out a pretty busy product week overall.
The countries with new Google Maps domains are highlighted in dark green:
Google has pushed several international expansions this summer across many of its services. The Chrome Web Store received expanded and better targeted support for international markets this month, and its improvements to the Google Search ranking algorithms, codenamed “Panda,” rolled out in most languages. Google Plus, the new social network, is still dominated by people from the U.S., but as Google pushes tighter integration of Google Plus into all its services, the international expansion of properties like Maps will raise its profile.
