Online Maps
When online maps started to become popular on the net, the two main players were MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps. For the most part, these two dominated the online map scene. In early 2005, Google Maps was announced, and it almost immediately blew the competition out of the water. Using an AjaXSLT framwork, the drag-and-drop technology took online maps to a whole new level of user interactiion.Â? With the release of Google Earth inÂ? mid-2005,Â? new ground was broken again. A free, 3-D rendering, virtual globe program, Google Earth allowed users to view the terrain of sites like the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest as if they were actually there, manipulating all aspects of the view like zoom level and the viewing angle.
Google had a stranglehold on the online map niche, and in typical Google fashion, it came out of no where, with a far superior product, and gobbled up a huge market share while everyone else scrambled to catch up. Windows Live LocalÂ? was released in December 2005. Although slightly better than Google Earth in some ways, with real imaging of buildings and streets, the release seems to have come with little or no fanfare, especially when compared to the hype of Google Earth. The bird’s-eye exploration will likely become a new standard for the rest of the online maps to implement, creatingÂ? almost a 360-panorama view of several major U.S. cities.Â?
The reason this all becomes more interesting is the announcement on SiliconBeat today about Yahoo! Maps finally offering satellite images. Although this is a major step for Yahoo! in catching up with the other 2 big boys, you have to wonder if the product will make a splash. It is obviously important to at least catch-up, but in such a competitive industry, users that have been lost to other map services are unlikely to be won back with a product that is only equal and not greater. Yahoo! product manager Michael Lawless did say the company had been focussing on “navigation space and the accuracy and usability” of the Yahoo! Maps service, but after lagging behind for so long, it will be interesting to see if this is too little too late. Going back to the article on SiliconBeat, there have been some back-and-forth comments between Google and Yahoo! about their competing products. With such an important product, something that can be built on so readilyÂ? (see Google’s newÂ? real estate search),Â? it becomes quite clear that this is far from over.