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Google Introduces Travel Alerts on Maps to Combat Coronavirus

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Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) division Google is making every effort toward innovation of its digital map in order to add more user benefits amid the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

This is evident from its latest move of updating Google Maps with the COVID-19 alerts and advanced features.

Notably, the company is introducing three types of COVID-19 alert namely transit alert, driving alert and an alert when navigating to COVID-19 testing centers or medical facilities.

All these alerts are based on data from local, state and federal governments.

We believe these alerts will be of immense help to people in the current scenario where countries across the world are taking steps toward unlocking their economy. The fear of contracting the highly contagious virus while being outside the house or commuting is increasing by the day.

Hence, the latest move is in sync with the company’s growing measures to reduce the spread of the deadly COVID-19 by creating social awareness.It intends to do the same on the back of its innovative technologies and huge amount of user data, which have been driving force behind most of its products and services for quite some time now.

This, in turn, has been instilling investor optimism in the stock.

Coming to the price performance, Google parent Alphabet has returned 33.7% over a year, compared with the industry’s rally of 12.9%.



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We note that Google is launching transit alert in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, India, Brazil, Colombia, France, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, and Thailand.

This alert is based on the information from local transit agencies. For instance, a transit alert will get generated when users are checking public transit directions for a trip, and that trip is in violation of government mandated COVID-19 restrictions.

Driving alert will notify regarding the COVID-19 checkpoints and restrictions on crossing national borders. The company is rolling out this alert in the United States, Canada and Mexico currently.

Meanwhile, the alert that will get displayed while navigating to COVID-19 testing centers has been launched in the United States. Apart from the United States, the alert has been introduced in Indonesia, Israel, Philippines and South Korea.

Apart from these three alerts, Google has made its crowdedness predictions feature, which was rolled out last year, easier to use for the Google Map users who want to share information related to their transit lines. Notably, crowdedness predictions provide information about how crowded a bus, train or subway is likely to be.

This will help people in making decisions regarding whether to take the ride or wait for the next in order to avoid the crowd.

Additionally, the recently introduced new insights like temperature, accessibility and security onboard, have been made available globally.

All these latest features and updates made by Google are focused at society’s wellbeing. The company strives to keep people safe from COVID-19 while travelling. Moreover, these features will help people in maintaining social distancing.

All these benefits are likely to deliver enhanced user experience, which in turn will bolster the adoption rate of Google Maps.

Consequently, this will drive the performance of Google segment of the company that contributed the most to the top line.

Alphabet Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Alphabet Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Alphabet Inc. revenue-ttm | Alphabet Inc. Quote

Growing Measures to Counter COVID-19

The latest move is in sync with Alphabet’sstrengthening efforts to help the society  in combating COVID-19. Apart from this, its health-care division called Verily recently launched a COVID-19 screening and testing website under Project Baseline.

Notably, this particular site, which is expanding rapidly across the United States, offers screening and potential free testing of coronavirus. The website requires users to begin with the eligibility questionnaire.

Further, the company recently collaborated with researchers from the University of Southampton in the U.K. to help people track the spread of coronavirus using anonymized and aggregated location data.

Google’s location-enabled apps such as Google Maps is collecting location data, which is then shared with the researchers in an aggregated and anonymized format to monitor people’s movements.

We believe all these strong endeavors will continue to drive Alphabet’s momentum and strengthen its competitive position against other companies including Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) , Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) , which are also are deepening their focus on the management of COVID-19 crisis by leveraging advanced technologies.

Currently, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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