>Do they use satellite images?
>are there other services that do the same thing?
>How do they get the data about public transits?
They might do all these things but I don’t see why they’d have to. They basically have real-time location data of everyone on this planet using an Android device or a Google app with location services. You don’t really need anything else to generate your own high-quality traffic data.
Many people turn on location services most of the time. Eg: Google pay in India works only when GPS is on.
The traffic data is obtained by tracking the individuals. With the speed of movement and number of similar individuals in the location with the spacing between each individuals, we can get information like:
Are they in a car or bus or walking
How congested is the traffic is
1 Yes they use satellite images for maps and telecom locations for accurate locations of the subjects.
2 Since Google has most of the data and everything is easily accessible (free), there isn’t much competition.
3 most people has android phones with location services turned on and other publicly available info with people sharing the information too. Like review and operating times are shared by fellow users.
From other devices. That’s why there was a guy (might have been here in Australia but can’t remember) who altered traffic conditions by riding a bike with a hundred phones in a basket. Google saw it as congestion, started advising people to avoid the area.
Edit: it was in Germany and he was walking, but the point stands. He was an artist, and walked it past the Google headquarters over there.
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