Google Maps is a great tool to help you find your way to unfamiliar places, especially with street-level tools like Street View and Live View But even if you know the address, it is of no use if you cannot see inside the building So Google Maps is trying to change this situation

Google Maps is testing a new feature that will add entrance display icons to some buildings That way, people can head to a brand new place with the help of Google Maps and not have to worry about finding which of the many doors is the right one We found this to be especially true when going to a faceless office building surrounded by faceless office buildings

So far Google only seems to be testing this with a small number of users and buildings, and it doesn't look like I'm one of the lucky few However, Android Police was able to see this feature in action, noting that the building entrance only appears when you select a building and you are zoomed in close enough

Judging from the screenshot taken by the site, the new entrance appears as a small white circle with a green outline and a green entrance icon within it This is very similar to the entrances that can already be seen at public transportation stations around the world

Selected businesses also seem to have their entire buildings tinted red This will prove to be quite convenient

Android Police notes that some of these entrance markers are incorrect, which is clearly more of an issue than Google experimenting with different icon designs Perhaps a lot of data collection needs to be done before this feature can be rolled out on a large scale After all, a generic entrance button to all publicly accessible locations is a much larger undertaking than adding it to a major transportation hub

This feature is probably still in its infancy and will need some work before it is ready to be rolled out to a wider audience But assuming Google gets it right, this could be incredibly useful for navigating to new and unfamiliar places I for one am willing to wait