Google commissioned studies from Boston Consulting Group and Oxera about the geo services industry and its economic impact on the world. The findings have been summarized in an infographic that Google shared on a couple of its blogs this morning.
According to the studies, the industry is valued at up to $270 billion per year, paying out $90 billion in wages. The U.S. alone has over 500,000 people employed in the industry.
“We’re proud of the contributions that Google Maps and Earth, the Google Maps APIs and our Enterprise solutions have made to the geo services industry and to making maps more widely available, but there’s a long way to go,” says VP Google Geo, Brian McLendon.
“1.1 billion hours of travel time saved each year? That’s a lot of time,” says McLendon. “Also, consider UPS, which uses map technology to optimize delivery routes—saving 5.3 million miles and more than 650,000 gallons of fuel in 2011. And every eight seconds, a user hails a taxi with Hailo, which used maps and GPS to deliver more than 1 million journeys in London alone last year. Finally, Zipcar uses maps to connect more than 760,000 customers to a growing fleet of cars in locations around the world.”
Full reports can be found here.