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Do You Recommend Google Maps API or Microsoft Live Maps?
KSobby writes "The organization that I work for is going to be redoing our website in .Net/AJAX. On the site, our members will have profile pages listing where their organizations are located (our members are scattered throughout the world) as well as other pertinent information for the general public. It is a non-profit organization, so funds are tight. My question to you: If we include maps, which API do we go with: Google or Microsoft? We're in a Microsoft environment (we're non-profit and Microsoft basically gives us everything for free) but the ubiquity of Google may be enough to sway us. Has anyone used either extensively? Used them in conjunction with .Net?"
I've implemented a solution based on Live Maps, and I was pretty happy. Not having used Google's, I can't provide tit-vs-tat comparison, but I know enough to tell you that MS's API is intuitive and easy to pick up.
About to make the switch to Microsoft Live Maps, I find Google maps to slow to load, if they load at all. Of course there isn't anything stopping you trying both and choosing the best that suits your needs.
I recently discovered MapCruncher which is a super cool add-on for the Microsoft Virtual Earth API. Basically, if you have any of your own high resolution maps (like PDF of a floorplan or bicycle route or whatever) you can align it to Virtual Earth and MapCruncher writes the thousands of tiny image tiles needed to make your map easily browsable right on top of Virtual Earth. Google doesn't have anything like this. (Even though Google Earth has an "image overlay" feature, they have nothing that runs in the browser, plus it forces the user to download the entire overlay image instead of just the tiny pieces they're trying to view.)
MapCruncher rocks!
Redfin did a decent writeup at the beginning of the year when they were deciding what technology to use. It was helpful to read when I was making the decision for the company I work for. Some of the things they point out have changed/been fixed, but it's still a good overview.
Privacy Group Gives Google Lowest Possible Grade
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I'll say. The entire city of Philadelphia is missing, and it's not exactly a small city. In fact, looking at the eastern US, it's pretty much useless at this point. Alas.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Really. Don't want to get stucked by one of the numerous webmap providers? Use OpenLayers.org. OpenLayers, open source, will legally allow you to connect to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other providers' data and switch between any without ever changin your code. No jokes, this is the best choice. Of course, it allows you to do *much* more. Want to learn more? Also, OpenLayers works perfectly with other widely used webmapping software, such as GeoServer.org and many others. See also the webmapping section over Slashgeo.org. (Yes I'm one of the founders, but it's really on-topic! :-) Why not read this entry on the webmapping APIs and data access.
Animoog.org
Do both. Seriously.
One of the oldest rules a downstream manufacturer (that's you) should follow is "avoid supplier lock-in". If you code with only one of these software titans in mind, you're subject to their terms. If you code for both, you can tell one vendor to zark off and/or play one rep against the other at pricing/ad-rev negotiation time.
Oh wait - you're a small non-profit with free Microsoft software? In that case there's no reason not to go with Microsoft. Development in 100% Microsoft tools is better than anything Google has...
One of the really nice things about Google maps is the same API is used for google maps and google earth. Well, maps uses a subset.
So you can easily do pretty-ultra-eyecandy that also works well when viewed just through the web.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I've used Google maps because of the more favorable licensing terms with google (you get more for less).
But I would look around for an asp.net control that wraps the api. There was one on the code project that doesn't work anymore.
Microsoft Live Maps might have a wrapped api for you that could reduce the development time.
Bad User. No biscuit!
For your information, OpenStreetMap uses the OpenLayers.org API to render its maps. The two have very different purposes.
Animoog.org
Maps are all about accuracy. Microsoft has more coverage with high res imagery (I can see my house from here!) but some of their street data is several years out of date.
For example, when I-74 was built, McKinney Road was re-routed to Hwy 601. The map has the correct positioning for I-74, but it still shows the old path of McKinney Road, even though the new path is visible in the image.
On the other hand, Google shows the roads correctly, but you can't zoom in the imagery nearly as close.
So its a matter of priorities. Do you want accurate or pretty?
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Microsoft. It took me 4 hours to port our software to Vista, and that mostly had to do with a (nonMS) driver and a (MS) dll issue. The trick to MS backwards compatibility is to not use the undocumented shit. SimCity broke when they went to 95 (they actually installed a patch in the OS for it for compatibility reasons), because of undocumented "features". Case in point, the permissions that they set up in XP were ignored by most developers because everyone ran in Admin mode. Then, they get to Vista, and "Accept or Deny" became famous overnight. Our installer, and our software, followed the annoying rules in XP on the offchance that someone was running as a regular user. Hence, when we ported over to Vista, the only time users had to verify the softwares intention was when installing the first time/patches. And that's a good time to pop that box up.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I set up a website for a brick-and-mortar store about seven months ago on my Mac. I then went to Google's maps and provided a link for directions. Then Google quit working with Safari browsers. Now, I know Apple's browser has its problems and has so many that many Mac users are not using the Apple-supplied beta browser because of problems with their release version but I cannot afford for anyone to not be able to load a map due to a problem with someone's map API. So I switched the website to use Mapquest.
Yes, I know that Mapquest is a slag-heap of a company since AO-Hell purchased it. I also know they're not innovating, they're just resting on their laurels and being used to provide AO-Hell with cash. But it works with all browsers I tested on Windows and Macintosh platforms, including some pretty obscure ones like iCab and Netscape's Navigator 2.0. Unless of until I get absolute assurances from Google that they'll never roll out new code again unless they test it first, I'm not using Google Maps for anything.
Haven't tried Microsoft's. Probably won't either as they won't work well with Macs or Linux or Unix and I cannot afford to disenfranchise anyone.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I have not used Microsoft's mapping service, so evaluate it separately of course... however, I have a lot of experience with the Google Maps API. You can expect your code to keep on working, firstly. They recently added a number of features, and now you need to instantiate a GMaps2 class because they were concerned about their legacy users. Their API is extremely easy to use, and is intuitively set up. Go to their documentation and check out some of the basic examples and look at the API docs for a minute. It has been a pleasure to use in my experience.
Also, if you need to do anything more advanced, you can use your own map tiles, and they provide nice methods for doing lat/lon -> pixel conversions if you need to render and cache some data that will overlay on the map. This is relatively new for GMaps, and I'm not sure if Microsoft's service offers this or not..
Google endeavors to support a much broader range of browsers than any of the Microsoft websites support. Give the users of what you are developing a choice, don't force them to use Microsoft's IE in order to take advantage of the functionality of your website.
That's being a little silly. The guy's in an environment that is Microsoft centric, and if it's non-profit, they probably have a lot of non-profit type software that does not run in linux. I know, because I'd helped a little 3-5 person non-profit, and their grant giving foundation requires them to use a specific piece of software to request grants. Would I want to reduce the grants I can get by screwing around with computers and OSes? Hell no.
Not everyone or everything should run linux. And I've been using linux since 1.3, and have no windows boxes in my house (other than in VMs)
Here's a comparison that I saw a while back on the dev blog for redfin.com.
[javac] 100 errors
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
In MY experience, I've found people write APIs over everything they don't find easy enough. .net. As others have mentioned, Google's
For Google Maps, I've found a simple wrapper class that cuts down immensely on the code,
and similar projects are bound to exist for
maps work in pretty much any browser.
Google maps are not free: http://www.google.com/enterprise/maps/index.html
I did some fairly extensive work with google maps, and I can say that their API is very well documented.
Personally, I wrote a local API for it in the language I'm working in, Water, and let Water deal with all the Google stuff for me. By mixing Water's AJAX features with Google's map API, I was able to create a fully AJAX enabled map API which notifies the server about every user action on the map, including clicking, dragging, etc, and deals with user initiated actions in an object oriented manner (for example, if a user clicks on a pin point on the map in the browser, it fires an event in the corresponding place object in the server). I also created an interface to KML, the language which was used by Google Earth and which is sometimes used by google maps now. KML is also well documented. I linked that into our place objects as well, so you can easily get a google map or some kml for any place object. KML is also useful because some other commercial mapping products are now starting to use KML as well.
I certainly wouldn't have been able to do all this without excellent documentation and a rich API from Google. Thanks to them providing both, the implementation went quickly and easily, and now Water has a fabulous map API thanks to Google making it all easy. And yes, I do have a clue what some of the alternatives are: prior to doing the implementation with Google Maps, I did another implementation using government services. (Actually, both are just subclasses of our abstract cartographer class, so it's a very direct comparison.) Google offered a much richer and easier API.
I did look at some other online mapping services, and if they offered an API, I found them to be more limited.
I can't comment on the Microsoft API or documentation, I haven't tried them.
You mean the link that says "Privacy Policy" at the bottom of the Google Maps API page which links to, maybe, the google privacy policy doesn't actually exist?
Dang. My mind is more powerful than I thought!
(for reference, the MS Maps privacy policy is here).
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
I founded a company back in the boom that merged with another one, the combined entity is now called deCarta (http://www.decarta.com/products/hws/hws_features_benefits.html). They provide mapping technology to Google.
They also host services, just like Google does, that you can connect to via their API's. Those API's are made to be OpenLS compliant, AJAX friendly, and other good things.
Disclaimer: I haven't written any code to work with their stuff, I haven't been with the company since 2003, I don't know how good or bad it this part of their business is. If anyone wants to take a look at tell me I'm all ears (sounds like the tech guys on here are a lot better at tech than I am).
Anyway, my only point is that there is a food-chain in the mapping space and nothing says that you will get the best value or service from either Microsoft OR Google, despite how popular their offerings might be. There are lots of other players in the chain that might be able to do more for you than the guys with the popular UI's at the top of the chain.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
Open in what sense? Source code? No - neither.
Platform agnostic? Google
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Hrmm.. not for me. Check out screenshot