The tool may be useful for runners or cyclists looking to measure their routes by distance. You can also use the tool to make fun drawings, as Google demonstrated.

Estimating the distance between two locations without relying on winding roads messing up your estimate, however, is a bit more complicated.

With the tool, users can measure the distance between two points or the surface area of a selected chunk of the map. (Now you can finally find out how far your house is from the North Pole.) Users ...