A typical Google travel search OneBox looks like this:

The new travel OneBox offers a more detailed box of information with departing cities, airlines and prices:

Clicking on the plus sign will extend the one box to show you additional departing cities, airlines and prices:

I personally cannot replicate it but let me share the screen shots from SEOGadget’s blog.

Postscript: Google officially announced this on Friday, May 27th. They said it works in 10 languages including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Catalan. They also said it is part of the ITA integration work they have been working on.

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Google’s reasoning behind this move is to make the roads safer and reduce accidents. Google said they have been testing this for a while and have already driven 140,000 miles with trained safety drivers who can override the system at any time. Google explained the cars figure out how to drive using video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead – which is all pulled from Google’s data centers. I won’t get into the possible privacy issues of Google navigating all the cars in the world.

How soon until you or I can get this installed on our cars? Google said, “While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting.”

The New York Times has pictures and a video, which I will embed below. There is also a diagram of how the cars are modified.

More discussion on this topic can be found on Techmeme.

The new Transit Layer is available as a choice under the MORE button on the Google Maps interface:

Once selected, the Transit Layer will display public transportation lines/routes for the area you’re viewing. Google describes it as a “virtual metro map on top of Google Maps.” It doesn’t provide full schedules and routing details like Google Transit does, but it will show the transit lines in the area. A full list of the 50+ cities announced today is available on the Google LatLong blog.

Several months ago, one report praised Google Maps as the most feature-rich of the four major mapping sites, ahead of MapQuest, Yahoo Local, and Live Search Maps.

Here’s more from the Google LatLong blog. Other green related initiatives and announcements launching in celebration of Earth Day can be found on the Official Google blog.

Google Transit is a tool to help you find public transportation options for your trip or commute. Google Transit supports travel southeast of the UK, SBB, Switzerland, VBZ, Zurich, Switzerland, Turin, Italy, and Florence, Italy. Yes, Google Maps and Google Transit are also integrated for the available European options mentioned above.

Here is an example route for Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Careggi to Piazza Leopoldo Pietro:

If you plot driving directions between Norwalk, California and Orange County, California, you should see an option on the left for “Directions: Drive There – Take Public Transit.” Clicking on “Take Public Transit” will plot Google Transit data within maps.

After you click on the transit link, you are given various ways to take public transportation between the two locations. Here is a picture of that in action:

Here is an embedded map:

View Larger Map

Currently Google Transit covers about 15 U.S. cities including Burbank, Humboldt County, Orange County, San Diego, Tampa, Honolulu, Duluth, Las Vegas Monorail, Reno, Eugene, Portland, Pittsburgh, Austin, Dallas and Seattle. Two of New York’s largest transit companies, New Jersey Transit and the MTA have both confirmed working with Google to provide maps and schedules to Google.

Greg Sterling was quoted when asked about the potential ad revenue Google can earn from such a program.

Google probably got about $500 million in sales last year from local ads, or about 8 percent of its U.S. revenue of $6 billion, said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence in San Francisco.

Joe Hughes of Google Transit sent Adam a Superman cape and a letter apologizing for the inconvenience. Here is the letter:

Dear Superman,

Reading your blog post about Google Transit at SXSW made us wonder if you were losing your powers—I mean, how hard could it be to leap over a simple 8-lane highway intersection, man of steel? We’ve enclosed a new cape—hopefully it will help you find your powers again.

…seriously, though, Adam, we’re sorry that Google Transit sent you on such an expedition, and we wanted to let you know that we’ve since improved our routing, so that it returns more plausible walking sections at the start & end of transit routes.

Cheers, Joe Hughes Google Transit

Now that is funny!

Google is known for doing things like this. In the past, Adam Lasnik from the Google Web Search team sent acetaminophen for the headaches AdWords were causing one advertiser. Adam also sent a pen to Ask.com after they made a funny blog post about their Google pen running out of ink.