Google Inc.

Paul Messmer

Yatin Dilip Chawathe

Nicholas Lee

David M Barth

Jennifer Maurer

Sascha Benjamin Brawer

Brett A McLarnon

Jamie Alexander Zyskowski

Chandan Kashinath Shanbhag

Lakshminath Bhuvanagiri

Haitao Liu

Seth Jacob Pensack-Rinehart

Gavin Reaney

Geographic data corresponding to a certain geographic area of offline coverage is stored in a memory of a computing device. An indication of a geographic boundary delimiting a region smaller than, and contained within, the geographic area is obtained. A current location of the computing device relative to the geographic boundary is determined and, in response to determining that the current location is outside the region, additional geographic data is retrieved via a wireless communication network to expand the geographic area of offline coverage. At least some of the geographic data corresponding to the expanded geographic area is provided via a user interface of the computing device when the computing device is offline.

Improving offline map data availability

A map data server may provide metadata about available indoor map data that accompanies map data for drawing a base map. For example, map data may include vector data for drawing a footprint of a building, and the metadata may include information about the physical properties of the building (e.g., an indication of how many floors the building has and if detailed map data is available for the indicated floors, etc.). A mapping application running on the client can use this metadata to display an interface that allows a user to select floors or otherwise interact with the floor data. Further, the metadata accompanying map data can include a bounding box, or a bounding polygon, for one or more floors. The mapping application can use these bounding shapes to properly reposition the viewport as map data for a new floor is being loaded, for example.

Enabling quick display transitions between indoor and outdoor map data

The subject matter of this specification can be implemented in, among other things, a computer-implemented method for accessing map tiles. The method includes receiving a first request from a computing device for a portion of a map. The portion of the map includes combined map tiles that are a combination of corresponding ones of first map tiles from a first type of map and second map tiles from a second type of map. The method further includes providing first tile version identifiers and second tile version identifiers to the computing device in response to receiving the first request. The method further includes providing instructions to the computing device for using the first tile version identifiers and the second tile version identifiers to request the combined map tiles.

Accessing map tiles

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Paul Messmer