Chapter 10. Maps and Mashups

In the beginning, there was MapQuest (www.mapquest.com), a site that allowed users to find maps and get driving directions in the United States. Debuting during the dot-com era, MapQuest grew incredibly popular and even went public, being listed on the NASDAQ exchange. All of the hype caught the eye of America Online, which acquired the company in 2000. Competitive mapping sites were developed by others, most notably Yahoo! and Microsoft, but MapQuest remained the most popular site for mapping and driving directions. Mapping web sites went through iterative changes over the next few years, but for the most part, things stayed still.

When Google Maps (maps.google.com, later local.google.com) came online in 2004, it offered a revolutionary interface for the traditional web-based mapping systems. Instead of the traditional click-and-wait interaction that MapQuest and others used to pan and zoom maps, Google Maps used Ajax communication to download additional mapping info or maps at different zoom levels without reloading the page. Additionally, the ability to drag the map around instead of relying on the ubiquitous compass interface provided a truly unique user experience in the world of online mapping.

The development of Google Maps reignited interest in online mapping and the possibilities that Ajax opened for this particular usage. Yahoo!, Microsoft, and even MapQuest rushed to update their map offerings to be more competitive with Google Maps, using Ajax and other, more responsive user interface paradigms.

As with many new developments in technology, developers were immediately drawn to the new interfaces used by Google Maps and other Ajax-enabled applications. Savvy web developers reverse-engineered Google Maps, embedding its interface in their own pages as a proof of concept. Though not harmful, this occurrence opened the eyes of Google, and soon they released the Google Maps API to the public. As before, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and MapQuest each followed suit with their own Ajax-enabled mapping APIs, flooding the technology world with numerous options for embedding maps into web pages.