Google Launches 'Google Trips' Personalized Travel Planner (techcrunch.com)
Google has an app for just about everything. Their latest application, called Google Trips, aims to help you better plan your vacations and other travels. TechCrunch reports: Called Google Trips, the iOS and Android app pulls in a combination of data from Google Maps and crowdsourced contributions from other travels, in order to offer a personalized travel guide that helps you keep track of your day trips, reservations, points of interest, tourist attractions, restaurants and more. The home screen includes a search box with a prompt "where do you want to go?" for planning new trips, and other cards let you keep track of your current and upcoming vacations and plans. What's helpful is that each city you plan to visit during one of your trips can each have its own tab within the larger "Trip" section, and with a simple toggle switch, you can download all the information about that destination for offline access. Meanwhile, on each city's screen, a variety of colorful cards help you jump into various sections like "Saved places," "Day Plans," "Food and Drink," "Getting around," "Things to do," "Reservations," and more. Google says Trips can show you the most popular day plans and itineraries for the top 200 cities worldwide. This information is actually based on historic visit data from other travelers, which Google has then assembled into lists that include the most popular sights and attractions. In addition to sightseeing, the app can also track flight, hotel, car and restaurant reservations, which makes the app something of a competitor to Concur's TripIt, and, to some extend, the new territory Airbnb is carving out with its own forthcoming Airbnb Trips app, which will focus on travel services. However, what makes Google Trips compelling is that it leverages Google's ability to tap into the data you have stored in your Gmail, as it automatically gathers your reservations from your email and organizes them into trips on your behalf. Google Trips is live now on Android and iOS.
I call it "new plan on how to smuggle between 200 countries since Tor was busted"
I look forward to seeing Google's product in play -- they've done such an awesome job with most others (notable exceptions being Google+ and Hangouts).
I use tripit.com. It can accept forwarded email confirmations, sieve out important data, put it all together, and present it online or on the Android app to make everything convenient.
It tells me the arrival gate at the airport, the next gate for the connecting flight, and I get flight delays from it quicker than through the airline (SWA, DL, UA) own text messaging system.
I hope google is successful... they have a high bar to climb to beat tripit.com.
OB DISC: after using it for one week I bought the "pro" version to get even more info. I love it.
OB DISC2: I travel business/pleasure about 4 times a year...
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ US
I want to tell Maps 'from Hartford CT to Baltimore MD via the Tappan Zee Bridge'.
Dragging the blue line is a pain, and usually ends up with a corkscrew at some point.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I do a lot of trips and just tried it for a past trip for which the app found details in my emails. It also found suggested trip details (not etickets) so don't blindly accept its suggestions. Anyway first impressions are good, lots of info in a personalised travel guide. And this is only a v1. Cool.
It is only available as smartphone app; Google considers it makes no sense to prepare a trip on a desktop?
another service to track me... i'll install it right now... noooooooooooooooooooot
I feel a great Disturbance in the Force. As though millions of travelers cried out and were suddenly trolled.
In the meantime Tucson, Az is a fabulous place. Don't believe that Hamlet guy.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If history tells us anything, they'll shutter this in 30 months and around 6 months from now they'll shoehorn G+ or Youtube onto this product. Yet again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
Download iOS app.
Asks for Google login - skip.
Search for a city I'm planning to see, ask to create a trip. Oops, that requires a Google login of course...
Sigh. Ok, here Googe is my login so you may track me even further.
Go to create trip - "Failed to create trip. Try again later".
Heck of a job, Google.
P.S. In the aftermath of no trip, tried other aspects of creating a plan for a city - Things to Do is empty, Food & Drink come up with nothing. So basically total server blowout.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not 1970. You don't put arbitrary limits into your software in 2016. I want to plan a route with more than 10 stops. I want to save it for later. And I'd like to put in how long I plan to bet at each stop so I can actually be in control of my travel.
I don't care about suggestions as to where I could go. I figured that out already. We have this awesome technology called "files" and "directories" that lets me save all of my stuff for my reservations. I don't need your help with that, either.
Google, is it so hard to replicate the functionality of a piece of software made in 1988? It's even discontinued now, maybe you can buy it from Microsoft and figure out how they made arrays with more than one digit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Streets_%26_Trips#History
Just a few minutes, before they get bored and say fuckit.
"Your trip to Saudi Arabia is next Monday. Would you like to see burkas from our valued advertising partners?"
Trolling is a art,
As somebody who travels a ton for both business and pleasure I really like what I see with it so far. I've been playing around with it and when I get stuck somewhere lousy in the middle of nowhere for work this seems to pretty easily make clear what's around both attraction and food wise as well as the standard Google reservations functions. What's weird is that since I do all my travel planning through Google it grabbed my past trips as well and listed where I'd been. Which is cool and super creepy.
I can't wait until Alphabet (that open rectum of a company) cancels it.
Looks like Her Doctor Schmidtty is up to old tricks to help his goat fucker brothers in ISIS.
I would like to set default "avoid tolls"
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I'll use it if we can have classic google maps back? I don't know who designs software there; but they need a talking too. I want a map - not 400 pictures over the map. I want split screen street view and map. When you go back to making handy to use stuff I'll have a look at the other things. You've made be use Bing maps again! ergh.
I would like to set default "avoid tolls"
Yeah, I've been screwed by that. What I really want is "avoid stupid tolls". If a toll road saves me money/time more than it costs to take it, I'm fine with that, but don't put me on a toll road to save me 2 minutes and no miles. Yes, that's a real example, I just double checked it. That's just stupid. Just use the IRS average cost per mile and minimum wage for time. Use anything.
BTW, avoid highways is really nice. It often finds a scenic route that isn't much longer.