It’s hard to believe that Google Maps is over 9 years old. I think back to how online mapping was done before it came and it was an ugly cruel world. The fact that I used MapObjects IMS to actually create applications tells you everything you need to know how bad things were. But as great as Google Maps was, it wasn’t always easy to get your data into it to create your own maps. That was Esri’s “thing”. Google Maps Engine has been around for a couple years but the API just went V1.

Today we’re launching the Maps Engine API v1.0: you can now do any CRUD operation on Maps Engine data via the API. The API is fully covered by our service level agreement (SLA) and deprecation policy. There is also a great set of new tutorials and documentation to help get you started.

Heck, even Safe FME supports Google Maps Engine for data upload. Putting your data on Google’s cloud. Google Maps Engine is sort of the Google My Maps for 2014 with it’s free tier. I’ve been playing around a bit with Google Maps Data Layer but I have to be honest just putting this data into Google Maps Engine itself sounds pretty good as well. You can expect a lot of playing Google Maps Engine from me this fall.