Google Maps to show toll amounts on Indian roads, navigate on Apple Watch

Google has announced a worldwide rollout of showing toll road prices on Maps, with the feature set to be available across 2,000 roads in India, the USA, Japan and Indonesia. The feature adds on to Maps showing segregated options between toll and toll-free routes for any destination, and swiping up on a toll road route will now show the amount of toll that you would need to pay on the said route in local currency.

Alongside, Google has also introduced the ability for Apple Watch users to start navigating their routes directly within the smartwatch interface, without needing to access a smartphone to begin navigation. The Google Maps interface will also show pinned trip information on an Apple Watch, which can allow users to access present trips or preset destinations such as ‘home’ from a list of pinned destinations.

Google will enable the toll prices to feature on highways by default, and users can choose to turn it off if they deem fit. Users will also be able to turn on the ‘avoid tolls’ feature within Maps to see only toll-free routes.

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Google Maps is estimated to have the largest market share among mobile navigation apps. As of 2021, Maps is believed to have a global mobile market share of over 70%. As of 2019, Ethan Russell, director of product management for Google Maps, had said that the app gets over a billion users accessing the service every month, making it the most used navigation app and service around the world.

The service has regularly added new features to its app, including multiple local discovery features and prompts over the past two years — in line with the Covid-19 pandemic. These features included a live display of covid-19 cases across areas, as well as information on the crowdedness of public services.

In India, Maps is also available in multiple local Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, and Odia.