The title of the post explains everything about Google Map Maker. Recently people of The United States were blessed with Google Cloud Print and now with Google Maker. The United States has a lot of companies who have been plotting and licensing the data with MapQuest and Google Maps but the same situation does not prevail in other countries and hence Google Map Maker was introduced. Using this tool you can create maps and submit it which is later published live to Google Maps after being reviewed.
How can Maps be edited?
Recently Google had made editing of Google Maps possible in The United States. This product has been lead by Lalitesh Katragadda and Manik Gupta who believe that this tool will let more details to be added to Google Maps. Apart from traditional roads, even places like university campuses, lawns and biking areas will also have details more than what they had previously. You can add footprints and 3d versions of buildings. It also allows you to use the Street view within the editor.
How is your edit published?
Not everyone who submits their edits can get it published to the Google Maps. Once you submit your edit, Google views your past submission history to ensure whether you can be trusted or not after which a small in-house team reviews your submitted edit and approves it. Once your edit is approved, it would go live on the Google Mas all over the world within a few minutes. So you need not keep waiting and biting your nails till your edit is approved 😀
This feature is currently available for the Web Interface only but hopefully it will be available for mobile platforms also. I would also wait for this feature to be introduced in India along with other 183 countries where Google Map Maker is already available. What do you folks think?