ZDNet - Google Map Api Transforms the Web

Link: Google map API transforms the Web - ZDNet.com via PubSub: Google Maps.

We are getting a great demonstration right now of open source power, as applications using the Google Maps API begin to appear. Mapquest, owned by AOL, has been around for many years, but it’s a proprietary offering. Yahoo Maps has been around for years, but it has been late to this party. It’s Google, using the open source process, that has blown the field apart. The code has only been out a few weeks but already we’re seeing several really great applications.”

Yea, yea Google Maps API is great, but yet another article that doesn’t mention ESRI or their API. It isn’t open source, but they’ve had it much longer than Google has had theirs. But the point they do make at the end of the article is very true.

And remember, this is just the start. I guarantee that hundreds of programmers are now poring over the Google Map API documentation, thinking about applications that will drive both them, and Google, to new heights.”

I hope we’ll hear an announcement at the ESRI UC that ESRI will release a version of their ArcWeb Services API that these programmers can freely use. If it is features these programmers need and what for their applications, it is ArcWeb Services that can deliver it today, not Google Maps.



Date
July 13, 2005