Comments on: Google eats some of its own with MyMaps http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070406/4399/ Technology, music, video, art, news, reviews and muse on the web Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:26:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: Riccardo Barbieri http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070406/4399/#comment-632675 Riccardo Barbieri Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:31:20 +0000 http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070406/4399/#comment-632675 It definitly IS confusing and worrying to use the free APIs. I am not a developer and I don't know other than GoogleMaps but I understand it must be very alike all sectors. Since the creation of our website we have always been wanting to offer interactive maps, in fact I have always considered it one of the greatest things Internet could offer. Interactive geography on screen!! And there comes Google makes the perfect application and offers it for free... We are a small business and have absolutely NO proper capacity to develop this on our own and no budget to outsource it. Besides that, I also have always considered that duplication of information or applications on the internet should be avoided as much as possible because people should not loose time in inventing the weel over and over again. So where does this leave us? Off course in grabbing GoogleMaps API with both hands and use it on our tourist information website for the obvious orientation purposes (where is what). Do we have a choice? We want to offer our visitors full information. But it definitly is scary to have one of the fundamental elements of your web depending on some centrally controlled wordlwide monopolious system where a few people you don't know, at any moment can take any decision that leaves you completely out of the game. In part we are already suffering the impact of Google's monopoly having a very bad year only because of the fact that we were not fulltime on SEO until a few months back, because we still believed in usability, functionality, quality of content and design. BUT NO! These "old" values do absolutely NOT count anymore. You are in Google's top 10 or you are not! It's that simple. There are a lot of websites that do better than us only because they score better in Google, even if they un-inform, are ugly, unorganized, user-unfriendly. It just does not count anymore. Fortunately for us some of them happen to be affiliates, so at least we share their "succes", but it still seems unfair. And it's frustrating to feel like working for google's sake more than for your own... Back to the free APIs. We have had several (we think great) ideas for useful and comercial applications based on GoogleMaps (or comparable ...which does not seem to exist). So... Would it make sense to try and develop these ideas??? I am not even sure if making a commercial web based on googlemaps is legal. Apart from that, if it would turn out to be succesful it would be very easy for google to develop the same in no-time, but 10 or 100 times better and with instant worldwide coverage, making any competition impossible. Restrictions could appear, or whatever else we don't even imagine. A new web, based on physical places, would be rather useless if it does not offer some maps and geolocation comparable to GoogleMaps. Frankly I think that google is offering real good internet stuff for users, but at the same time they are a growing threat for any website based business (specially destination webs, hotel reservations and real-estate) because they already have it all covered and for free. It definitly IS confusing and worrying to use the free APIs.
I am not a developer and I don’t know other than GoogleMaps but I understand it must be very alike all sectors.
Since the creation of our website we have always been wanting to offer interactive maps, in fact I have always considered it one of the greatest things Internet could offer. Interactive geography on screen!! And there comes Google makes the perfect application and offers it for free…
We are a small business and have absolutely NO proper capacity to develop this on our own and no budget to outsource it. Besides that, I also have always considered that duplication of information or applications on the internet should be avoided as much as possible because people should not loose time in inventing the weel over and over again.
So where does this leave us? Off course in grabbing GoogleMaps API with both hands and use it on our tourist information website for the obvious orientation purposes (where is what). Do we have a choice? We want to offer our visitors full information.

But it definitly is scary to have one of the fundamental elements of your web depending on some centrally controlled wordlwide monopolious system where a few people you don’t know, at any moment can take any decision that leaves you completely out of the game.

In part we are already suffering the impact of Google’s monopoly having a very bad year only because of the fact that we were not fulltime on SEO until a few months back, because we still believed in usability, functionality, quality of content and design. BUT NO! These “old” values do absolutely NOT count anymore. You are in Google’s top 10 or you are not! It’s that simple.
There are a lot of websites that do better than us only because they score better in Google, even if they un-inform, are ugly, unorganized, user-unfriendly. It just does not count anymore. Fortunately for us some of them happen to be affiliates, so at least we share their “succes”, but it still seems unfair. And it’s frustrating to feel like working for google’s sake more than for your own…

Back to the free APIs.
We have had several (we think great) ideas for useful and comercial applications based on GoogleMaps (or comparable …which does not seem to exist).
So… Would it make sense to try and develop these ideas???
I am not even sure if making a commercial web based on googlemaps is legal. Apart from that, if it would turn out to be succesful it would be very easy for google to develop the same in no-time, but 10 or 100 times better and with instant worldwide coverage, making any competition impossible. Restrictions could appear, or whatever else we don’t even imagine.

A new web, based on physical places, would be rather useless if it does not offer some maps and geolocation comparable to GoogleMaps.

Frankly I think that google is offering real good internet stuff for users, but at the same time they are a growing threat for any website based business (specially destination webs, hotel reservations and real-estate) because they already have it all covered and for free.

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