No one likes waiting in lines, but there’s little way to avoid them besides trying to ballpark when a business will be extremely busy.
Now, Google is rolling out a new feature in its search results that shows hourly foot traffic at millions of different businesses around the world. The feature works by using anonymized location data from people’s mobile phones, much in the same way Google measures traffic congestion data.
Google has gotten scarily good at predicting when a traffic jam is going to slow drivers down, so it will likely get equally skilled at predicting peak waiting times in stores eventually.
The feature is available across mobile phones and will begin rolling out in the next few days.
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