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Google Maps
Tuesday, Feb. 8 2005 | Author: dennisIn case you haven’t read about this on another blog yet: Google Maps.
I’ve just played with it a little, and I’m very impressed. You don’t need to re-load the page at all the navigate, and you can simply click-and-drag to move along the map. Same goes for zooming. It’s all done on the fly, and there is no need to wait for the page to reload.
I wonder what Google wants to do with this. It can’t really make them any profit, so I wonder why they would launch such a service. Same goes for a lot of other Google services to be honest.
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9 Responses for "Google Maps"
February 8th, 2005 at 5:45 am
1…and North America is, of course, the only continent on the earth. I wonder where the other 5.9 billion people live?
February 8th, 2005 at 6:50 am
2Re: Making Money
Maybe they could charge to put your business on the map in the area you are located etc.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:21 am
3Why can’t they make money? I’m sure they can squeeze a few ads in, just like other map services; except i’ll be in text. I mean, ad is what makes most of the money for google, right?
The generated maps are pretty accurate and has a nice feel to it. The movement when you push the arrows has a ‘picasa’ feel to it. And I didn’t notice this for a while, but you can leftclick and hold on the map, and move the mouse to move the map.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:40 am
4Phillip:
I just read this on Map24.com:
” Due to the new cooperation between Google, Inc, and Mapsolute GmbH, maker of the unique mapping portal Map24.com, it is now possible to search for city maps in all European Google search engines. If you enter a city name into Google.nl, the first result list entry is a special link to Map24.com that brings up the corresponding city map. On the result page, for sure, the full set of the rich Map24 options is available to the users.”
Seem like that info will be integrated at a later stage.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:55 am
5I don’t know so much that they need the maps to generate profit (on their own at least). Looks like its mostly intended to be an extension to Google Local… and having their own maps are essential to that component.
The top level “anchor-tabs” seem significant to me… this is a welcome change for Google. Yahoo-esque.
They need a way to get back to the homepage/websearch from the maps page.
Anyway, I dig it. I also like the lack of detail in the maps. Clean… easy to read.
February 8th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
6A couple more points after examining the map a bit more.
The bad:
-A few blocks never finish downloading, so it sometimes leaves white boxes on the map.
-Not enough data to find some rural areas.
-Syntax recognition sucks (surprisingly).
The good:
-Amazing execution of XHTML & JS. Almost feels like I’m using a desktop app.
-I was wondering why the images look so clean and I found the answer: The images are in vector format! This just antiquated all the .gif map services.
This will blow everyone away when they iron out the problems and go live… which I’m guessing will be in 2015.
February 8th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
7“Amazing execution of XHTML & JS”
urm… i meant DHTML. Don’t tell my boss.
February 8th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
8They could be planning to incorporate this with their phonebook.
Currently if you go to Google and type phonebook:location, city, state, it will give you a listing. But the links for maps show mapquest and yahoo.
February 8th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
9this is a beta guys don’t forget that.
One of the reasons I respect google so much is because they don’t always create things for profit, they create because they can. And because of this I will respect them as a company and would be more then happy to buy their products. (in the end I am sure they make money off it by simple association)
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