This will make people’s lives easier. That’s why I like Google, plain and simple.

Gas pump manufacturer Gilbarco Veeder-Root is rolling out 3,500 Google Maps-enabled touchscreen pumps around the country that “include an Internet connection and will display Google’s mapping service in color on a small screen. Motorists will be able to scroll through several categories to find local landmarks, hotels, restaurants and hospitals selected by the gas station’s owner.”

Once you find what you’re looking for, you can have the route printed out for you. As mentioned above, the points of interest are pre-selected so you can’t enter whatever address you want to drive to and get a printout of the route…yet. Gilbarco Veeder-Root hopes to add that functionality in the future.

You’ll also be able to print out coupons to use inside the gas station. These will be negotiated by gas station owners and, interestingly, Google doesn’t make any ad revenue off of this system. That’s not to say that it won’t eventually make some coin, though. I’d think that when personal point-to-point directions get enabled on these things, you might start seeing some of the ads that you’re used to seeing when using Google Maps on your big boy computer.

Latest Additive at Gas Pumps: Google [AP] via CNET