Cabbies behind Bangalore maps on Google

Hyderabad, Feb 16 (PTI) Cabbies are supposed to know thecity like a back of their hand so its no wonder that searchengine giants Google turned to them for mapping Bangalore.

Google used its cab drivers in Bangalore for the citymap-making. The cabbies turned out to be good contributers tothe Google maps software, a senior official of Google Indiasaid today.

"Cab drivers are the best when it comes to knowing thegeography of the city and with a bit training in internet anycab driver can become a good map contributor," Google India''scountry head (products), Vinay Goel told reporters here.

"In Bangalore, we have our office cab drivers. They droppeople in the morning and take them in the evening. They havenothing to do in between. So we give them maps and they workwith our people in our lab.

"Many of them have the advantage of knowledge of the cityand hence started mapping for us. There are a couple ofdrivers who contributed heavily to the map-making," Goel said.

To a query on use of cab drivers for the same purpose inother cities, he said it depended on their interest andknowledge in internet.

"For other cities we cannot say because we don''t know howmany of them are trained in internet. We have not reached outto them directly but if they have passion they canparticipate," he added. (More) PTI GDK VKV