Topic awaiting preservation: Who will stop the Google juggernaut? (Page 1 of 1)

Have any of you checked out http://maps.google.com/, Google's MapQuestalike?

Not only is the interface great, but the speed is unbelievable. I requested a route from my home to my parents home (without even giving the *exact* data, just streets and cities), and in 2 seconds it pops up the ideal directions there. Yes, seriously, 2 SECONDS.

Very impressive indeed!

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

who would want to sto pthem?! This is awesome!

^^^i agree

B | T | E | P | L

Goodbye Mapquest!

wow.

I mean.....

really - wow.

yes, cal (he coded pixelflo, if you know what that is) referred to this as "probably the best dhtml app ever".. which says a lot...

I've been using a CD based map program for my aussie roads, and although the map itself is great, the GUI is absolutely hopeless.

This thing is spectacular, does everything i would want my cd based one to do.

The zoom takes a little while, but i love how every view is perfectly made - a lot of programs only have 2 good zoom levels, way in and way out, and anything else is so poorly antialiased, you can hardly read it, or so poorly labelled, the street names are nowhere near their streets etc.

I can't wait until they have maps.google.com.au!

It's pretty cool as a DHTML app, but it ain't no Streets and Trips.

:::11oh1:::

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who would want to stop them?!

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Nobody...yet.

Ten years from now when Google has a finger in every pot, they will be demonized much he same as Microsoft has been.

Success is great in the beginning, but get to big and people feel the need to knock you down.

ps. The maps are cool.

Ramasax

quote:

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Ten years from now when Google has a finger in every pot, they will be demonized much he same as Microsoft has been.

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Not sure about that. Every big business != MS . Google offers great apps which have nice elegant UIs with no compromise on speed. Besides never seen them do any bad market practices either. They have been pretty smart till now.

saturnine

Europeans, give http://map24.com a try - that's an older, very nice, javas based route planer which is even nicer to use than google maps.

(Edited by Tyberius Prime on 02-09-2005 10:29)

*lights torch* You sure about that TP?

TP: Not even 1/20th as fast as Google. Even with Java already on on my system, it took a long time to load and find the city.

I'll stick with Google's beautiful WebApps for now, thanks. (Of course, map24 has more than just the US... but that doesn't mean much to me, just to people outside the US).

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

once loaded, map24 is nicer to use to google. You never have any 'empty' spots in your map, easy zooming, measuring of distances... I like it better than the google variant. (and they use the map data from the same company anyhow)

Yeah, I'm reasonably sure of that, but I go to a map site 2 minutes before I have to leave to go somewhere and realized "Crap, I don't know how to get there!", so speed is a critical issue for me.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

A little breakdown of how the Google map thingy works for those interrested: http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio - Vim Tutorial -

Google Maps looks great. Too bad I'm not used with US addresses to play correctly with it.
I didn't knew http://www.map24.com, but it rocks! since it's vectorial, the rendering is largely faster than Google Maps ( though my 2Mbits/s DSL line ), and it has some great features like the "quick position overview" which quickly zoom out and in, and the "distance notifier" which let you drag and drop some targets and shows the cumulative distance between them.

I checked out google maps just today, and I was very impressed. Map24 seems really good also. I also just checked out http://groups.google.com and was really quite impressed with that as well. Discussion boards come a dime a dozen these days, But to be able to have instant access to several boards (groups) at once is a intuitive concept. I can really see google getting their hands in thinks similar to flikr and plaxo. If so, I'm looking forward to that. They seem to take everything they touch to the next level.

I bet you're familiar with Google groups already! They bought deja in 2001ish which maintained the usenet archives, so basically it's searching newsgroups/usenet which has been around forever

and for those Australia asylumites there's always http://www.whereis.com


Justice 4 Pat Richard

New Google services rolled out today:

http://www.google.com/googlegulp/

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Emps

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if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

quote:

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Europeans, give http://map24.com a try - that's an older, very nice, javas based route planer which is even nicer to use than google maps.

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Due to the new cooperation between Google, Inc, and Mapsolute GmbH, maker of the unique mapping portal Map24.com, it is now possible to search for city maps in all European Google search engines. If you enter a city name into Google.co.uk, the first result list entry is a special link to Map24.com that brings up the corresponding city map. On the result page, for sure, the full set of the rich Map24 options is available to the users.

No Sig ?

They now incorporate satellitte photos:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=738&e=1&u=/ap/20050405/ap_on_hi_te/google_maps&sid=84439559

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Emps

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if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

But lawsuits are being filed against them (and Yahoo, etc.) about their advertising rates:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111265034532297608-TEcjJA8V_mnuukWG0MzcHcBc_f4_20050505,00.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

so perhaps the juggernaut might be about to suffer a bump in the road?

___________________
Emps

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if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

If this lawsuit gets much publicity it could most certainly affect not only the way they charge for advertising like this, but could also quickly slow the astronomical revenue growth rates companies like Google have enjoyed.

I would think it would at least give businesses that are considering going with this type of advertising reason to pause and reconsider just what you're getting for your money.

-Butcher-

Oooooooooo now there is a fuss being made over their AutoLinks (good comments from Zeldman):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,,1458551,00.html

Its Smart Tags all over again but they have gone one better than MS and not provided a facility for switching it off

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Emps

The Emperor dot org | Justice for Pat Richard | FAQs: Emperor | Site Reviews | Reception Room

if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Does it only work for America?

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Yannah: From what I can see, it only works for the United States (and Puerto Rico) and Canada right now.

I was looking forward to seeing a satellite photo of my house, too. Guess that will have to wait...

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

OH...that's really bad. I guess I have to be patient for a while, but I can't....AAAAHHHH!

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| "The past will always attack the present with the pain of your memories." - Seiichi Kirima |
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you really think google is so great..

just try to do an uncensored search on an american based web search engine. I dare you. No, i triple dare you.
make sure you chose a sensitive topic.

if you want a nice example, try doing a non family filtered search for "traci lords" images on google, altavista
and then emule

the secret of holding information back is to throw something else in front of it. remember that, children.

~this is not a signature~

on the google note, who needs a ride? http://labs.google.com/ridefinder

/D

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{ ?The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.? (-Barlow, John Perry) }-

You can now go through your search history (I'd probbaly be arrested if anyone found that!!):

http://www.google.com/searchhistory/

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org | Justice for Pat Richard | FAQs: Emperor | Site Reviews | Reception Room

if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!