Google launches Quick Builder: a low-code tool for integrating location services into self-built applications.
Google is introducing Quick Builder. That’s a tool that lets you discover and integrate APIs for location-based tasks based on Google Maps. With a minimum of code, you can thus customize experiences that use Google Maps’ location services to the needs of your own application. Google initially provides Quick Builder with three so-called “experiences.
Three components
First, there is Locator Plus. That’s a tool that helps customers of a business quickly find a physical location on a map. The customer then immediately sees opening hours, available services, photos and possibly reviews. With this, Google is targeting retail chains or banks, among others, that want to quickly show their customers where the nearest ATM is.
Address Selection has been developed to suit online stores. The integration works on the basis of the Place Autocomplete API. When customers need to enter their address for a delivery, for example, it goes a lot faster through this experience since the address is completed automatically.
Finally, Google is introducing Neighborhood Discovery in Quick Builder. With it, you can expand your own maps with additional information. Those who rent or sell locations, for example, can thus quickly show visitors what is still available in the neighborhood.
Rapid integration
The experiences are blocks of code that you adapt to your own needs through a visual interface. So you need very little code to build the components: a few mouse clicks suffice. Then you can integrate the low-code blocks into your own application. In time, Google plans on expanding Quick Builder with additional experience.