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Google Launches Mapping Service
Alex Reynolds writes "The beta version of Google Maps is now online, offering an alternative to Mapquest with what some might describe as a very much improved user interface, offering a cleaner layout, drop shadows, clickable waypoints and keyboard controls that allow you to move and zoom the map. For IE and Firefox/Mozilla at this point (no Safari or Opera support, as yet)."
GoogleMaps + AdSense + Google Local = Massive profits for Google and a fantastic customer experience.
I knew the folks at Google were smart, but...
I'm a big tall mofo.
Any word on if / when this service will include non-US maps?
As said before, yes, it only seems to work in IE/Firefox (which is a shame). But, it is still easily the best map experience I have ever had. Being able to just type parts of an address into a bar instead of seperate boxes is disorganized, but quick and easy. And the balloon popup for current location is useful. The vector graphics are great, and scale to monitor resolution. I just wish NAVTEQ would add topographic information (for that matter, why does NAVTEQ do everyone's maps?). The zoom scale is much better than others, since it is live and smooth scaling. However, overall, the system doesn't seem like it would transfer to print well. I suppose the only way to find out is to try it.
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Very nice interface, and certainly less cluttered than maps.yahoo.com or mapquest.
But best of all -- my new subdivision is on the map whereas it's absent on all the other free map services that the pizza guy, furniture stores, and other delivery folks keep trying to use because they've never heard of my street before.
Google's "DO NO EVIL" company value really shows in this excellent service.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
This looks very much like maps24.com... their application was java-based, and this appears to be browser-based / scripted.
Maps24.com won a Webby in 2004.
The click and drag for map movement rocks.
I never use Mapquest. I use maps.yahoo.com, and when I login with my yahoo id (started using it for mail, now I just use it for everything but mail because gmail rocks), I am able to name and save specific locations. So now I have all of my son's soccer and basketball game locations available for instant lookup.
When Google Maps gets this feature and allows me to save locations linked to my gmail account, I'll switch over. The new interface in Google Maps is cool, but Yahoo maps (and Mapquest, I suspect) is good enough - especially for simply printout out map and driving directions.
Is if this worked on my Treo 300.
The maps look so much cleaner than others I've seen, and might actually be somewhat understandable on the small screen. I really think it would be amazing if combined with Google Local, I could put in an address in New York, and "pizza" and have a map with the nearest pizza joint.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
1) They won't take you the wrong way down one-way streets.
2) They will get you to your destination instead of 95% of the way there.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Um, ok.... those two services you linked to? They suck compared to this. They're a big reload fest, just like all other traditional web apps. Click, wait for a new picture to load, repeat endlessly. It's not interactive, it's just a normal web page with links that do interesting things.
Google's service does live zooms, live scrolling, and never leaves me waiting. If it requires breaking standards to accomplish that, then so be it. Nobody's forcing you to use it.
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I second this... I'll be sticking to map24, thanks.
yes, google's new maps is impressive-ish. I take it that it's an extension of what they've done with Google Suggest - in-time downloading of elements.
Cute, but I still can't do realtime zooming in/out I can't plot routes, or easily hop from Pizza place to Pizza place.
-And- map24 doesn't revolve around the U.S.
Google's maps seem to be missing at least one fundamental map feature: a scale of distance. They have a nifty slider and a not-so-nifty scrolling feature (I cannot find any way to select my own center point (never mind, just discovered I can clikc'n'drag)). But they are lacking anything that would allow me to estimate the distance between two points on the map. At last a standard scale can be used for guessing. A TRULY fancy feature would be an option to click on start, and have the display dynamically highlight the route and show the distance... If anyone can do it, the Googlites can, right? (smile)
..and it failed to notice the highway connection. It sends me through back roads by the geographically most direct route, then tells me that the 45-minute drive (I've done it) will take 19 minutes. It looks nice, but it needs some work. It seems they are ignoring/miscalculating travel time. Mapquest, on the other hand, gives me the route I've found to be fastest.
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
The user interface is really nice and cool while being simple.
However, like most other online mapping application, they don't provide geographic coordinates which could be used in a GPS device.
Right now, I'm using using Multimap most of the time, even if their maps are a bit outdated, because they provide geographic coordinates.
If they google where to provide geographics coordinate, at least for driving direction, with a way to download them in a text or xml file, it will beat the compitition without any doubt.
As I understand, all these services like Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, Mappoint, and Google Maps might be using United States Postal Service (USPS) (or some other such govt org) data on street level maps and coordinates. (This is only my understanding, it MIGHT BE COMPLETELY WRONG).
And the problem is that, such data is not easily available for other countries. Hence, we can not expect Google to go and map out all the countries in the world when they start their beta service.
Even if such data exists for other countries compiled by their respective organizations, it will possibly take more effort and time to integerate with "n" number of organizations' data in various formats. Just like Yahoo Maps and Mapquest provide very less coverage of other countries.
I have found a solution to Riemann's Hypothesis, but have run out of spac
And there's a little bug - if you search for a city, its name appears on the right. Now, zoom out, and zoom in on another city. The city name doesn't change.
I'm looking at Montreal (street level), and i says I'm still looking at Ottawa.
This will be GREAT for practical jokes - "Need directions? Here's the map of downtown New York (hands over map of Detroit that says "New York" on it).
Now what about those of us who have to hold a map upside-down over our head to make sense of the orientation? Frigging monitors are HEAVY.
Yeah, it is a very cool interface. Also, it loads incredibly fast, and I think it's probably by far the clearest map rendering I've seen anywhere. Extremely good visual quality.
For other choices, I still love Map24. They've got Europe and North America, and the whole thing in a neat Java applet that is also very usable. But Google's map is gonna be tough competition for them...
Also, you gotta love the typically Google way of doing your address or directions queries... just say "Kansas City to Los Angeles" etc. and it works.
But of course it's still Beta. A simple test for "Wilmington, DE to Jersey City, NJ" in my case renders a misplaced blue line that I can't quite make sense of. But if that's the only problem...
The interface here, and that of Gmail, is truly impressive. It's astounding what Google has accomplished here in web applications, simply blowing away those apps that have had many, many years of dedicated development in the area.
If you have experience creating map sites with ArcIMS or any of the major GIS software, you know that this interface and speed are unmatched.
To simply leap over the competition like this is something that's been missing in software for a long time...
It really a map. No goats.cx.
Maybe I'm daft, but I'm sitting here looking at the direction screen with the little drop shadowed markers, but how do I set a clickable waypoint? I must be missing something here. I can click on the endpoints for the destination, but I don't see a way to click on the map and add a waypoint to the directions.
Maybe I misunderstood.
"Nevada test site" You actually get roads. They could have been funier by putting some UFO Photo instead of gray area!
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
It doesnt seem to recognise 'London' as a city in Europe.
Come to think of it, it doesnt seem to show Europe at all and scrolling down from N.America to S.America I can only assume that there has been an awful lot of flooding down there lately.
I think it'll be more impressive than that. If you've tried the Keyhole satellite software (parent company bought by Google), it becomes obvious that the eventual product will incorporate actual satellite imagery down to the block level.
If you haven't tried(played)with the keyhole software, I highly recommend the free trial. Same address location, zoom in and scroll capabilities as Google maps plus angle effects, but with real satellite photos.
http://www.keyhole.com/
It seems to use XSL, which neither Safari nor Konqueror supports.
...and the whole thing in a neat Java applet...
Which proceeded to crash my Firefox browser. Thanks.
The image is made out of an array of tiles, each a GIF about 3.6K in size. They have URLs like this: http://mt.google.com/mt?v=.3&x=5&y=-4&zoom=8 As you pan to the right, each tile's src attribute gets the url of the tile to its right, which is of course already in browser cache. The rightmost column of five tiles is then fetched from the server. The very clever thing is how they make panning continuous. I have to look at their javascript to see how they accomplish it, it's quite an illusion. In any case, the efficiency of this approach accounts for the generous size of the map. and its responsiveness, which would be hard to achieve using conventional mapserver techniques.
I've worked with developing web map services before. This approach complicates some things you might want to do, but is probably how you'd do it if you wanted a very fast, ultra-scalable service I wouldn't be surprised if Google, which in many ways is in the information storage business, has got all these tiles pre-rendered somewhere. Normally, you'd render the gif for the entire map in a temporary directory somewhere. Natrually this approach is more processor and bandwidth sensitive, but saves on storage. Of course, it allows you to do other kinds of GISy things that probably would be hard to do with Google's approach, but those kinds of things are relatively rare in this kind of application.
I'd like to figure out how to map from geographic coordinate systems to the bizarre system they're using. Then I could use the mapping service for my own uses.
Altogether, it's an interesting first effort. A rectangle drag zoom function would be welcome.
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MapQuest's raw data has the direction of one-way streets marked. Google's presentation layer is much better, but MapQuest's data is therefore much more useful in navigating. If it's going only in the direction against you, it's not a street - it's a very dangerous wall. Maybe when it's out of beta. But I haven't seen Google make that big a change; their betas are nearly done.
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The map information that Google is using is at least 6 to 8 years old in some areas. They could have at least launched a service that had fresh data.
I like Yahoo Maps because it lets you save locations for use later, like if you make the same trip again a year later. I don't see this in Mapquest, MSN/Mapblast, or Google Maps.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Why on Earth was it necessary to design this thing to work with any particular browser(s)? It should have been easier to design it to conform to all the applicable web standards; operability with all conforming browsers then comes for free. If IE or Firefox uses some non-standard feature that's not supported by other browsers, you just don't use that feature.
I'm tired of web sites telling me to "upgrade" my browser to MSIE or Netscape. They should upgrade their web sites to the World Wide Web.
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