april 2006 archives

Friday, April 28, 2006

Google Maps does continental Europe

As of Tuesday, Google Maps now covers many countries in Europe, including the Netherlands! Furthermore, they have launched beta versions of Google Maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These sites include the full suite of interactive street maps, driving directions, and integrated local business search.

Hopefully, more and more Dutch mashups will now join the Leiden op de Kaart application I covered in February. Although I have been looking forward to this ever since Google Maps was launched, I must admit it's still difficult to grasp the opportunities this provides!

To wrap up this short posting, I am sure online mapping providers in Europe will really have to reconsider their business! Of course, they have people in customer services and account managers to assist customers. SLAs are in place to guarantee service uptime. Development teams build exciting new products and they provide technical helpdesk. But who cares if you've got online discussion groups to turn to? If you have all the documentation available online and have so many blogs covering cool mashups? Who needs an SLA when it's Google hosting the maps? Sure, as soon as location-based advertisement will appear businesses will think twice, but you can then probably just obtain a business account with Google Maps that offers mapping without the ads? Let's see...  permanent link for this entry