A New Mathematical Basis of Google Maps

Abstract

In the middle of 1990s, Google made available world maps which can be zoomed in to the largest scales, with the maps collectively named Google Maps. Google Maps is primarily intended to facilitate navigation by car, public transport, bicycle, airplane or on foot. Such maps require a conformal or approximately conformal projection because it is important that e.g. perpendicular streets in any city in the world also appear approximately perpendicular on the map. To make orientation easier, it is important that north always points to the same direction on a map. The same requirements apply to maritime and aerial navigation, where advantages of the Mercator projection have been known for almost 500 years.