Do you have the Uber app installed on your phone? Good. Now, if you look up transit directions for any location within Google Maps (for iOS or Android), you should see an option to take an Uber to your destination. You’ll also see an estimate of how much it’s going to cost to get you there. Here’s me testing it out:
After entering my destination per usual, I went to the taxi/transit tab on the far right, and that’s where I saw the Uber integration.
After tapping on it, I was deep linked into the Uber app with my location/destination information carried over. Pretty neat. I’m going to start doing this a lot more often.
#NoMoreUberDriversWhoDoNotKnowLagosMoreThanIDoEvenThoughIJustMovedHere3MonthsAgo.
Before now, the integration was available in only a handful of cities across the world. I know that Uber is one of Google Ventures’ portfolio companies – they invested $258M in the transport network company in late 2013. This makes me wonder whether or not this is some form of startup-nepotism, and whether Lyft, Afro and the other apps in competition with Uber will have to approach Bing or Yahoo (lol) or for a similar deal. Not sure how that will pan out, since Google owns the 2 largest search engines in the world. Welp.
Hat tip to @SeyiTaylor, for pointing out the integration to me.
