Google recently announced that they would be introducing a new feature for the popular Google Maps app. The new addition will show users the estimated waiting time for a specific restaurant.
Prior to this feature, Google had already introduced a feature that tells a user the busy times of a specific business. It's an excellent feature for users particularly when it comes to deciding on which restaurant to eat in and when the best time to dine is.
For several years, Google has been very busy with Google Maps, leveraging its capacity to newer heights. As an example, back in 2015, Google Maps began introducing a feature in which it informed users the busy days of the week for a particular restaurant or business. Of course, the feature showed data only for businesses and restaurants that were registered in Google Maps.
After that, Google introduced an upgrade to this feature by offering real-time data.
However, it's the creativity and technology behind the feature that is really ingenious. Google makes use of anonymized and aggregated data from users who opt for Google Location history.
While this information is available for all businesses that are registered in Google Maps, it's in the food industry in which the data is very useful.
While you're at the popular times chart, there's another set of information that can help you in terms of planning. For example, Google Maps will feature information like "People usually spend 15 minutes to 1 hour here."
As of now, when you check a restaurant in Google Maps, a pop-up box window will appear if you click the time frame. The historical data or real-time data will register as "usually not busy," "usually busy" or "busy." It will also feature the wait time.
By calculating the concentration of phones in a particular restaurant and factoring in the time for which the phone stayed inside the restaurant, Google can then project a fairly accurate data of the business and the waiting time of a specific restaurant. It can also give reports on long-term trends like which day or month is the busiest for a specific restaurant.
The great thing about the report is that Google doesn't need to collect the data in any intrusive way.
The new wait time feature is going to initially support almost 1 million restaurants worldwide. It's safe to assume that more and more restaurants and businesses are going to feature such data in the future.
This new feature addition puts Google in direct competition with existing apps like NoWait, an app that shows the "wait time" for a particular restaurant. What makes Google's feature different is that it allows users to put their names on the list for a specific restaurant.
If enough users do this, then it's possible for Google to project the amount of traffic on a specific restaurant for the next 15 minutes. Such feature is very convenient for users going to restaurants that don't take reservations.