Google Maps has rolled out a new feature by means of which it can tell how busy an area is for its users by labeling it as 'Busy area'. The announcement about this new 'Area Busyness' feature by Google Maps was announced by Google from its blog post on November 16, 2021.

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What is the Area Busyness feature?
The blog post by Google informs, "Whether you’re heading to your hometown or exploring a new city, you can use Area Busyness, a new feature that combines live busyness trends to help you instantly spot when a neighborhood or part of town is near or at its busiest."

How to use the feature?
The users must be wondering how to use the feature on Google Maps. The Google Support page suggests that when a user opens the app, Google Maps highlights when an area is near its busiest. Now, by tapping on the 'Busy area; the label will bring up a chart that shows how busy the area is at different times of day, along with a directory of restaurants, shops, and recreational places (like a museum) within it. One may have to zoom in on an area to find busyness information.

Privacy policy
The Google Support page reveals, "We combine live busyness trends from places in an area, like stores, restaurants, parks, cafes, and more to determine its overall busyness level. These trends indicate how busy an area typically is - and when it’s near or at its busiest we highlight it as a “Busy Area” on Google Maps. To protect our users’ privacy, our systems don’t calculate busyness information for residential places like a house or apartment."

The users must know that 'Area busyness' never reveals the exact location of an individual. Google uses an advanced technique called differential privacy to ensure that all data remains anonymous, safe and private. Furthermore, Google displays busyness for an entire, predefined “area of interest.” These areas never display exactly where a crowd is within it. Also, it does not calculate busyness data for residential places like a house or an apartment.