Well, I am not really breaking any news here. Just for those folks who might’ve missed this.
Google Maps now shows Live traffic information. This is a sign of relief for Indian users who were only relying on Waze at the moment. The traffic data isn’t too accurate at the moment. But as we all know the more the users the more the accuracy (it’s crowd sourced).
The UI is very intuitive and this traffic information is also available on the Google Maps applications on Android and iOS (probably on other OS with traffic layer support too).
The same information is also available on the Google Maps on your regular browser too, ensure to select the "Traffic" layer on the top right. This should be incredibly useful not just to the users but also to the local Traffic Police too.
If your phone doesn’t have a Google Maps installable app (or has a really old one), the Google Maps Mobile website provides this information too. So launch up your mobile browsers for this.
I am still gonna be using both Waze and the Google Maps mobile application to contribute to the crowd-sourced traffic information. I still hope to see voice directions for India on iOS for this to be completely useful.
Who wouldn’t want their phone to shout out "Heavy traffic ahead, take evasive actions immediately"?
The best mapping service (accuracy & usability) in India has to be Google Maps and this puts Google much ahead of Apple Maps (Starting iOS6) in India. Hope to see a stand-alone unified Google Maps Application on iOS soon.