Google Maps
Mar 24
Posted: under Technology.
I needed to look up an address this morning. As usual, I used google as a phonebook to match the address to the name I had in the first place. Usually I go someplace else for a map, but I bothered to click on the address this time and I was treated to Google Maps.
And boy was I impressed. This has probably been around for a while now (I’ve seen the links, just never followed them….I know they used to link to yahoo and mapquest). It’s still in beta (is there much of anything at google that isn’t?..) but it’s looking good. For starters, if you’re into eye candy, like me, then this is the place for you to go. Everything is nicely drawn and just looks good. 3D pins and dialogs stick out of the map and even have shadows drawn. The map is also BIG. Most other services seem to give you a tiny map and then clutter the rest of the page with other junk. Google maps is mostly map. It’s much easier to read this way. Navigation is also greatly simplified. They’re running a javascript setup that allows you to actually grab onto the map and drag it. It loads in a dynamic fashion, so it looks like the map is actually sliding instead of disappearing and then redrawing one screen over. Everything is smooth and quick (at least with broadband.. 
). I looked around for some different stuff and I saw streets that have only been around for a couple of years that are on the map. It also gives directions and all that. You can search for a name and it’ll pop up with little pins wherever it finds a match.
I instantly thought that google was a step ahead of the competition here, but I decided to go check out a few other sites while I was at it. I also looked at yahoo maps, mapquest, and mapsonus. All 3 other services are somewhat more difficult to navigate through as they use the traditional controls. All 3 also show relatively tiny maps and just generally don’t look as good. From the shapes of the roads, I’d say that yahoo maps uses the same data that google maps is using and mapquest and mapsonus are each using the same, different set of data. The latter two sites couldn’t even find my address. The road itself was there, but part of it was missing. That part was there when we moved in 5 years ago. Their data in general also didn’t look quite as realistic as the other data. Maybe it’s just the area I’m looking at. On the other hand, after seeing all of this, I’m never using the latter two sites again (or at least I won’t even bother checking them out for quite some time).
Anyways, it looks nice, it’s really easy to use, everything’s big and it’s fast. The next time you need a map check out google maps.
