Google & Audi take Google services in a car to the next level in the new Audi A8

Nowadays, it seems like everything is connected to the Internet: mobile phones, laptops, netbooks, portable game consoles, personal navigation devices. Think of how applications such as Google Maps for mobile have changed the way you find locally relevant businesses or addresses, or real-time traffic along your route. We can even get online from 35,000 feet while on an airplane, or while traveling at 300 km/h on a train. Google has worked with the automotive industry to bring services like Local Search into cars in the past - now we're teaming up with Audi to bring an entirely new type of technology into the car: Google Earth.

With their newly unveiled Audi A8, Audi is the first car manufacturer to bring Google Earth directly into the vehicle and to combine that with a set of useful Google services. We've worked closely with them to create a compelling in-car experience integrated with the Audi navigation system. You'll be able to enjoy 3D satellite imagery, terrain information and a wealth of additional geo information relevant to your current location: layers like Wikipedia to learn more about your surroundings or Panoramio images to get another view.

To help you figure out where you want to go and how to get there, we've also brought Google Maps and Local Search into the A8, and linking it to your desk. You can send business listings directly from Google Maps to your car: search for an address at your desk, send it to the car, and by the time you go to the parking lot your car will know where to go. While in the car, you can use Google Local Search in the same rich quality as at your desk. Imagine you get hungry on the way or want to find a cinema – simply perform a live Google search on your car navigation system and immediately get up-to-date, rich and relevant results.

Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco - Send popular destinations directly from your desk into your car

Google Earth has come a long way from when it received "oohs" and "aahs" during its demonstration for Googlers and the public in 2005: it has now been downloaded over 500 million times on the desktop, is available in 41 languages, and has a mobile version for iPhone. As Germans, with a natural born passion for cars, we're very excited about this newest milestone and we hope that drivers will have that same "ooh" and "aah" reaction when exploring Google Earth from the Audi A8.

Cabo da Roca, Portugal - Pushing your car navigation display to the next level

Source : http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/