Googlin' the USA

[sbisson]

An interesting new Google beta - Google Maps. An interesting mix of search and mapping - so you can search for something near somewhere.

Now, if only it covered more than just the USA.

(Oh, and if you have found that Google seems to persist in throwing you to google.co.uk, then you can just click on the "go to google.com" link on the Google UK page. It'll reset the cookie Google uses to direct you to a country specific version of the site. Thanks to wendyg for the tip!)

Comments

[drplokta]

It'll never cover the UK, because the OS is a monopoly provider for most of the UK and charges a lot for displaying maps on websites, on a per-display basis.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they'll just buy Multimap then...

[drplokta]

Multimap license their maps from the OS and pay per display, same as anyone else.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Yes. What I meant was it's a lot easier to buy an existing licensee than negotiate a new contract...

[drplokta]

But Multimap displays eight graphical ads against each map as well as a bunch of text ads. Google's model doesn't work for a cost-per-page as high as you have to pay the OS to display UK maps.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

NAVTEQ - who do Google's maps also provide the mapping data for the MSN Maps and Directions UK maps.

It may well be easier than we first suspected...

[drplokta]

Thanks, this might actually be very useful for work purposes -- where we're keen to display maps on a high volume web site with no ads without paying £150,000 per year to do it.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

Not a brilliant amount of data - the city map of Madison, for example, doesn't show block numbers, nor does it indicate one-way streets. But then US maps are generally crap, they don't have Ordnance Survey, do they?

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

cf http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/01/03.html#a562 ?

as far as the google.co.uk thing....

[tanais.livejournal.com]

does no one know how to use a public proxy http server anymore?
I routinely use anonymous ones all over the planet....