Here's another example of the kind of thing Local / Mobile can do for us.

Google Maps Navigation added a feature this week to automatically route around traffic jams in real-time.

You've Got Better Things To Do

Marissa Mayer is in charge of Local at Google. At a conference this week she described the effects of this: Google calculated that it has saved its users 2 years of time every day since launch, in aggregate. That’s $250,000 in fuel costs saved because people aren’t sitting in traffic, Mayer said.

Unfortunately Google Maps Navigation is only available for Android phones at this time.