UPDATE 5/8: Google has rolled out the option to make a list of Google Maps locations based on your screenshots. In the “You” tab on Google Maps for iOS (Android coming soon), look for a “Screenshots” section and tap the option to try it out. Google Maps will ask for access to your photos. The next time you take a screenshot, open Google Maps, and if the app “recognizes a place, a message will pop up telling you that it has places ready for you to review,” Google says. Save it to your screenshots or discard; you can also upload photos manually.

(Credit: Google)

Original Story 3/27:
After years of Google offering to monitor airfares to help you grab the cheapest price for a chair in the sky, the tech giant is now offering the same assistance to book a bed on the ground, with hotel-rate tracking launching this week.

“Simply tap the price-tracking toggle below the search filters, and you’ll get an email if prices go down substantially for any of the hotels listed in the results,” Google says in a blog post. “Our systems will account for the filters you’ve selected, like star rating or beach access, as well as the specific area you’re viewing on the map.”

That post highlights another new feature to help with trip planning. If you give Google Maps access to your photos and then start taking screenshots of travel pictures found on social media and elsewhere online, Google Maps can lean on Google’s Gemini AI to discern the locations of those pics and put them on a personalized map.

In a break from Google’s usual practice, Android users will have to wait to try this out. “This feature starts rolling out this week in the US in English on iOS — and is coming soon to Android.”

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Google is also using this opportunity to remind people to use Gemini and other AI tools to plan trips. My test of “create an itinerary for Washington, D.C., with a focus on local food” yielded a three-day outline that led off with breakfast at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, followed by a half-smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl. That is legit though unoriginal advice, but you should verify Gemini’s output like any other AI chatbot. 

The same goes for the Gems personalized AI agents that Google now suggests using for ongoing travel planning. 

Separately, Google shared some search data about where Americans would most like to get away. The top five international destinations, as discerned from Google Flights searches for departures from US airports from June 1 to Aug. 31, are Curaçao, Osaka, St. Lucia, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. The top five domestic destinations are San Juan; Billings, Mont.; Nantucket, Mass.; St. Louis; and Providence, R.I.

If there’s a pattern among those seemingly random destinations beyond a certain fondness for places on or near water, we may need to turn to Gemini or some other AI app to find it.

About Rob Pegoraro

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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.

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