Well, this was a little awkward.
Per PC World, Google has removed a service that predicted travel times with traffic from the browser-based version of Google Maps.
Google Community Manager Daniel Mabasa announced the change in the Google help forum in response to a question from a user who noticed that ETA with traffic had disappeared from Google Maps.
“…We have decided that our information systems behind this feature were not as good as they could be,” Mabasa said. “Therefore, we have taken this offline and are currently working to come up with a better, more accurate solution.”
Apparently the “information systems behind” the feature weren’t bad enough to remove the service from mobile. Google Maps for Android and iOS both still predict travel times with traffic.
Oddly enough, Google Maps’ Navigation Android App was recently updated to help steer users clear of traffic jams. The data reportedly comes from others who are using Google Maps on their smartphones.
In a 2009 blog post, Google stated that a phone with an active Google Maps App “sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers.”
Unfortunately, this doesn’t go all the way and tell you when you’ll get to where you’re going…
Which is kind of the other piece of the puzzle.