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Karandeep Singh / Android Authority
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Ask Maps in Google Maps already uses Gemini to give you recommendations about restaurants you might like. Now Ask Maps appears to be getting ready to actually place food orders for you. It’s not yet clear exactly how this agentic capability will work, or if there will be device restrictions.Like everything else under Google’s sun, Maps currently incorporates a healthy dose of Gemini, with one of its biggest upgrades landing this past spring through the introduction of Ask Maps. That can be a great resource when you’re out and about and looking for suggestions on somewhere to visit — like a restaurant recommendation, for instance. For as useful as that is, it could soon be getting even better, as Maps gets ready to place food orders on your behalf, so your order’s ready when you get there.
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Today we’re checking out version 26.27.00.941319029 of Google Maps for Android. While we don’t see any new food ordering options live in the app just yet, the presence of some new text strings sure makes it sound like developers are working to add just that:
Code
Copy Text<string name="ask_maps_food_ordering_promo_title">Ask Maps to order food</string> <string name="ask_maps_food_ordering_promo_body">"Say what you're craving, discover local favorites, and Maps will order for you—even while you're on the go."</string> <string name="ask_maps_food_ordering_promo_query">Order food</string> <string name="ask_maps_food_ordering_promo_cta">Try it out</string> <string name="ask_maps_food_ordering_promo_dismiss">Maybe later</string>We love it when an in-development app feature is this direct about explaining how it’s going to work, and this one sure sounds like it’s going to do all the legwork of actually placing the order on your behalf — as we surmise from that “on the go” language.
Right now, all this text we’re seeing appears to be in the context of the app announcing the new feature to users, and enticing you to give it a go for the first time. But that still leaves us with plenty of questions about exactly how this is all going to work, under the hood.
For instance, would the actual food ordering be offloaded to Gemini in the cloud, or would this be a feature that relies on specific smartphone hardware, like we saw with Gemini’s ability to place orders thanks to agentic functionality on the Pixel 10 series? We’re not used to such restrictions in Maps, so hopefully that doesn’t end up being the case.
We’ll keep an eye out on further Maps updates in the hopes of picking up a little more insight into both the feature’s operation and a potential ETA.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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