00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Google Maps will soon let you ask Gemini for coffee shop recommendations.
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And Android will eventually let you fully automate apps like the Rabbit R1.
00:09 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:11 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C Scott Brown, and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:19 – Mishaal Rahman: So, I don’t know about you, Scott, but I have quite a bit of trouble when it comes to scouring Google Maps for like a restaurant I should go try out with some friends. We just have so many dang good options here in Houston. It’s just such a melting pot of different ethnic cultures and different restaurant options. Most of the time I’ve been relying on word of mouth. Like I’ve been asking my friends, my family, extended family members, or just going to Reddit, like the Houston subreddit for recommendations. But maybe soon in the future, I’ll ask Gemini instead through Google Maps.
00:48 – C. Scott Brown: So, you might trust AI to make something like a food recommendation for you, but would you trust AI to actually act on your behalf and buy things for you? So, tech companies are really hoping that you will trust AI to perform those kinds of tasks on your behalf. But so far, all these AI agents have been either based in a browser or in some other situation like that. But Google is now working on an AI agent that can control your Android apps for you, right on your phone, but we’re not so sure that’s a good idea.
And another change that has us scratching our heads is Google’s plan to bring its new Nano Banana image creator, which everyone loves, to Google Lens and Circle to Search. So, I mean, Nano Banana’s great, but why Google Lens and Circle to Search? That’s kind of confusing. Those things are made for searching.
01:43 – Mishaal Rahman: Riding that gravy chain a little bit too hard there, aren’t you, Google?
01:46 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah. Yeah.
01:48 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m not really sure how I feel about that particular use of the integration right there in Google Lens and Circle search. But I am really excited to see this new Ask Maps feature that Google’s working on for Google Maps. So, I mean, to be clear, Ask Maps itself is not actually new because this is something that Google actually rolled out late last year, you know, the ability to ask Gemini about a certain place in Google Maps. But the way it works right now is that you have to actually highlight a place, you like tap on a location, this card shows up, the usual detail card, and then you might see this Ask Maps about this place kind of at the very top in the overview tab. And you can kind of ask anything you want to know about a place. You even have some recommendations, like if you select a bar, you can ask, do they have a full bar? Is it quiet? What’s the dress code like? And etc. But this is only once you’ve selected a location and you actually found the place that you already are looking for and you’re curious to learn more information about it. But the new version of Ask Maps that Google’s experimenting with, according to our APK insights team, or our APK teardown, whatever you want to call, our team that does the teardown, AssembleDebug, took a look through the Google Maps app and he discovered that Google is working on a new interface for Ask Maps. This interface is accessed through a chip right below the search bar. You can see here in this screenshot right here, well, if it’s not obscured by the watermark we have. Underneath the search bar, there’s this Ask Maps chip. You tap that, and it pulls up this full screen, almost full screen interface that kind of resembles the main Gemini app actually. You have this hello indicator, you have these chips at the bottom that with like recommended things you can ask about, search bar with a microphone icon. And basically, it’s just like a full Gemini interface but within the Google Maps app. And I think this is a big deal compared to, you know, what we had before, which is just location dependent. Now, this is kind of like a generalized access entry point to Gemini within Google Maps. You can ask it about pretty much anything that you want. So, I mean, I personally think this is going to be a game changer for how we search maps for locations, for restaurants, for coffee shops, and etc. But what do you think, Scott?
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