From CNET: Just in time for the holiday shopping frenzy, Google is rolling out a tool to let you know how crowded a business is in real-time -- so you know exactly where to avoid.
Think of it like Waze, but for pedestrians. Waze, a Google-owned crowd-sourced traffic app, warns users when there's traffic on certain roads or things to watch out for such as a crashed car or speed radars. But instead of saving you from traffic jams, Google's live-crowd feature helps you dodge packed places, like the swarm that'll surround your mall on Black Friday.
Starting Monday, just look up a business and tap on the arrow to get more information. Google will give a live analysis on how busy the business is and what you're up against if you go there.
The search giant's live feature builds off its Popular Times tool, which lets you know when a place is at its busiest. That tool compiles the hours when certain businesses reach peak popularity by collecting data from users who store their location information on Google's servers.
The latest enhancement will determine how crowded an area is within an hour time frame based on aggregated, anonymized location history data. That might help you decide between heading out to your nearby stores for deals on Black Friday, or choosing to stay home and waiting for Cyber Monday deals.
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