Let’s mix Maps and Contacts and see what happens

From the “pool” to “burgers” in one easy step.

Yesterday I needed to drive to a friend’s house, one who had recently moved. Out of habit, I started typing her name in the search box in Google Maps, but alas, Maps had no idea what I was talking about. Instead of finding her address in my contacts, it brought me to a town that shared her first name in France. Stymied, I had to open my contacts, copy her address, paste it into the maps search box and get a route that way.

My exasperation with this very simple process made one thing clear to me: we can no longer be bothered to remember facts and numbers pertaining to our acquaintances. When we need to call them, we never dial their number directly, we pull up their contact info by their name and dial the person, not the number. Maps should be exactly the same. We don’t go to an address, we go to a person.

Google has started doing this with “home” and “work” designations. It makes a lot of sense to stop typing my home address every time I need directions from there to wherever. Adding contacts to my map search results would be great.

But wait, Google. Before you jump in and add all of my Google+ circles into my map search results, creating a big mess, let’s limit this to the more “intimate” contact list, the one you call “My Contacts.” It’s a sane, curated list of around 140 of my closest contacts.

While I have your attention, can we add additional tags of more frequently visited places beyond “home” and “work?” Like “school,” “gym,” “supermarket, “sushi place” or anything else I fancy? It will help me create routes quickly, without entering the same addresses again and again.

Thanks for listening!

Note: an alert reader pointed out that while looking at a contact, I could click on the address field and maps will open with that address pinned. Not exactly the feature I was looking for but certainly an efficient short-cut.