Google maps

Like most everyone else in the blogsphere, I've also been very impressed by Google maps. Like they did before with gmail and Google Suggest, Google has again pushed the boundary of what can be expected from a web application.

Navigating a map on Google maps is clearly much easier and intuitive than their competitors' sites. The map is autosized to fully use the available screen real estate, and the ability to simply drag the map to pan it is way better than the alternative of having to reload the entire page when you want to move in some direction.

That being said though, this is still a beta product, and it shows. Even though their use of dynamic html is extremely impressive, the routes that are calculated seem less than optimal sometimes. Also, a route-print I tried earlier from firefox ended up printing the map without showing the actual route superimposed (even though it did show on my browser).

I guess there's a reason why a Google address search still links to yahoo and mapquest, and not yet to their own service. I'm sure this will change soon though once they perfect their service and any legal contracts they may have with mapquest or yahoo maps have expired.

The cool thing is that from a consumer perspective, it probably won't really matter whether their routes remain sub par or not. I'm sure their competitors are already working on updating their UI to match or even improve upon what Google has done. Just like hotmail users have benefited from gmail, so will mapquest users benefit from this service. Competition rocks!

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.hutteman.com/scgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/182
Comments

I for one welcome our new mapping overlords.

Posted by Jacques Troux at February 11, 2005 2:53 AM

Apparently not printing the route is a Gecko bug according to people like: http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html#c110798533582318431

Posted by RichB at February 11, 2005 3:16 AM

GoogleMaps seems really good, the possibility to simply drag the map is not new. www.mappy.be has had this option for years.
When looking at GoogleMaps I get a deja vue.

Posted by Jens Samson at February 11, 2005 5:26 AM

I have a Blackberry from T-Mobile that allows me to Google. When I was in Charleston over New Years, I wanted to find where a restaurant was. When I did find it, it told me where the restaurant was based on where I was standing. There was a .2 mile distance affixed to it. If the Google Maps is that kind of "place-aware" then it will surely be a formidable competitor.

Posted by Chris Abraham at February 11, 2005 12:52 PM

It's still not as good as http://www.us.map24.com.

Posted by pUnk at February 11, 2005 10:42 PM

The still have a very long way to go on coverage. Multi Map seems to cover just about the entire planet.

All so, it bugs me that you can only zoom into the very center of the map, rather than clicking on the bit you want to look at.

Anyway, I am sure I'll be using it when it reaches us in the UK. I'm very impressed by the speed of it. I wonder if this will change as more people start using it.

Posted by Martin G. Brown at February 12, 2005 2:05 PM
All so, it bugs me that you can only zoom into the very center of the map, rather than clicking on the bit you want to look at.

To help with this, you can double-click anywhere on the map to have it centered to that location.

Posted by Luke Hutteman at February 12, 2005 2:35 PM

Google maps
Like most everyone else in the blogsphere, I've also been very impressed by Google maps. Like they did before with gmail and Google Suggest, Google has again pushed the boundary of what can be expected from a web application. Navigating...

Trackback from Blogger Tom at February 24, 2005 3:22 AM

I was very impressed with the satellite image feature. Once you load a map or route click on the satellite link and see the map trasform to a satellite image. Really awesome.

Scott

Posted by Scott at April 22, 2005 12:01 AM

I asked on their feedback link if they planned to add a distance scale to Google Maps, but haven't gotten a reply. Anyone heard?

Posted by Pat at April 28, 2005 1:52 PM
This discussion has been closed. If you wish to contact me about this post, you can do so by email.