Idea: Google Maps Travel Tips

The Background

On most phones with Google Maps, your location is being tracked in the background. If you go to your timeline in the app, you'll see all the places you've gone, ever.

Now, privacy concerns aside, this is a pretty cool opportunity.

But it's very rarely used for anything cool. The only value I've ever gotten from it is remembering the name of a place I went on vacation a few years ago when a friend was asking.

The Idea

Nevertheless, there is an opportunity to extract value from this data. Here's one.

Do you know how Tiktok knows exactly what you want to see?

They look at what you've watched in the past, compare it to everyone else, figure out who is most like you, and then they show you the things that the other person has watched that you haven't yet.

It's a pretty simple but effective algorithm.

Now, let's say you're on vacation. Or you're just looking for things in your own town.

This would be an app that integrates with your Google Maps. It takes the data of where you've been. It then finds other people like you who have been to the place you currently are.

It then suggests to you the places that the people like you went.

Let's say you're in Madrid. Historically, you've really liked museums. So it checks other people who mainly go to museums. It sees that these people went to Museo Nacional Del Prado when they were in Madrid.

Then it suggests it to you.

This would work for any type of location — tourist attractions, restaurants, parks, etc.