Google Launches App to Help You Find Open Parking

Google Labs has just released a new Android app that aims to help users find and share parking. The app, called Open Spot, gives users the ability to update a map when they are leaving their parking spots with others who are looking for parking.

We’ve all driven around aimlessly, trying to find a parking spot — whether it’s on a street corner or in a shopping mall — and Google is hoping to crowdsource a solution that can save, gas, pollution and ultimately time.

The app is pretty simple; it pulls up a Google map near your current location and displays open parking spots within a 1.5km/0.9 mile radius of where you are. Spots are color coded based on how “fresh” they are. Spots are marked for twenty minutes and after that time, they disappear off the map.

When you leave the spot, you just mark it on your phone and alert those around you that a new spot is available.
While we think the idea has a lot of promise, there are some inherent limitations into this system. First, the time limitation means that there is the potential for a spot to be taken before you get to it. Even if a spot is marked as “fresh” (within five minutes), that might not mean the spot is available. If there was a way for users to confirm that they have “taken” a spot in the system, the process might be better.

The biggest problem though is that this is the sort of app that will only be useful if it gains widespread adoption. For instance, if you’re one of the only people in your neighborhood who uses the app, it will likely be useless to you unless you can convince others to join in.

Getting people to use the app is going to be the biggest challenge, we think, because while the idea is good, it’s also novel. It’s the sort of novel solution that we could see ourselves using once or twice and then utterly forgetting about. Ultimately, this just strikes us as something that looks great as a theory but will be too much work for too little payoff to gain lots of traction.

That isn’t to say we don’t love to see technology used to try to solve problems like finding parking spots. Android owners can download the app now and give it a try.
Would you be interested in using an app to find parking spots? Let me know in the comments!

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