"Google Inc said on Tuesday that the company has begun offering mobile phone users in more than 30 major US cities the capacity to view highway maps with 'live' traffic data," reports Reuters.
"Highway traffic information is sent to the phone, with road conditions highlighted in three colors: -- red for congested, yellow or orange for slowdowns, and green for smooth sailing."
As the story notes: "Rival Yahoo Inc offers live traffic conditions on its computer-based map service, but it does not yet provide a mobile phone version for Yahoo maps."
Comment: I can't decide if this is a good idea or an evil one, and I'm not sure whether it has a point. If you are going to check the traffic before setting off, you're better off doing it on a big PC screen. If you want traffic info while on the move, the various satnav systems do a far better job, and they are generally designed to be operated safely while you're driving. Why not use one of those?
It seems to me that anyone who wants to look up the traffic conditions using Google maps on the average smartphone is most likely going to have to pull over, run a Web browser and cope with both fiddly controls and a very small screen. This is a dramatically worse option than a satnav system that permanently displays the route and can give voice warnings of traffic conditions. Even worse, there may be people who are so stupid they don't pull over to look up http://google.com/gmm on their phone, and end up killing themselves and perhaps somebody else.
Update: Ahem, just noticed our news desk has covered the story here.
