Google Hits South By Southwest With User Stats

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I remember when South By Southwest was more a film festival than a center of tech news, but when Google’s own Marissa Mayer (VP of Location and Local Services) shows up and starts telling everybody about Google Maps, that sort of changes the game a bit. And indeed, they were right there, dropping the word on Google Maps, including a bit more on Google Maps for iPhone.

First off, the big news: Google actually announced that the company, on average, is the map service of choice for roughly every other person in the United States. That’s 150 million people, but they’re not all in America–that’s really more a reference number than anything else. They also came out with some supplementary numbers with that, that they’re guiding users an average of 12 billion miles every year (or around about 90 miles per user), and saves its users an average of two years’ worth of travel time every day. Lest you get freaked out by that number, remember, that’s an aggregate–two years spread over 150 million users is around about 0.4 seconds per user per day, and I’m really approximating.

But it wasn’t just metadata Google was slinging around–there’s also word that Google Maps might get “smarter” in the future, analyzing things like traffic data and weather conditions between you and your location to figure out more exact travel time.

And of course, Google is talking about its iPhone connection. Make no mistake, they like having a presence on iPhone at all, but they want to broaden their reach, getting more updates to the users.That’s not surprising, but Google’s already walking a very fine line getting anything on iPhone at all. After all, they are a competing brand, and a very strong one thanks to the impressive Android presence.

So Google Maps is doing very well indeed, and if the word out of SXSW means anything, look for Google Maps to get even better in the future.