5 ms·

They ran all of their competition out of business.

mythz 8y ago
Google Maps was a revolutionary product that popularized the category, they had no competition when it was released, at least now there's Apple Maps, Open Street Map, Bing Maps, Tencent Maps. I was developing with ESRI ArcGIS at the time, ESRI was a multi-billion dollar GEO company who had no product that even came close to the instant utility Google Maps launched with. The only other product that had a similar "Wow" factor around the same time was Keyhole which we were using before Google acquired them and used it to launch "Google Earth". If anything Google Maps spawned competition in the last decade, the existing competitors like ESRI are still developing their GEO products for Internal/Enterprise use, but now there are a number of competing consumer mapping services that provide the same utility and functionality of Google Maps from large technology companies that didn't have GEO as part of their competency like: Apple Maps, Bing Maps and Tencent Maps.
- cpeterso 8y ago
  I just finished reading "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but it has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal. The book is pretty interesting, but light on the technical details.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  While I agree about the utility, MapQuest pre-dated Google Maps by a fair bit.
  - hacker_123 8y ago
    It's kind of amazing how well Google did without a first mover advantage here. MapQuest launched in 1996. Google Maps launched in 2005.
    - treis 8y ago
      The advantage of Google Search and the willingness to lose millions (billions?) Of dollars on a product is a powerful combination.
      - mattm 8y ago
        It didn't work for Google+
        macintux 8y ago
        The only thing more powerful than money is the network effect.
  - mythz 8y ago
    The instant utility was essential to its massive popularity, it basically ushered in the new era for real-time Consumer mapping. Everything preceding it was clunky, slow and "turn based". I can't recall what the state of MapQuest was at the time, but it's unlikely it had the real-time UX or utility of Google Maps. Was a real eye-opener of "so that's how you make Maps fast" at the time, just pre-render the entire world at multiple static zoom levels. Which wasn't an option (disk cost) for anyone developing their own in-house mapping Services at the time. For my next GEO project I did the next best thing and used their Google Maps API to change it to make map tile requests to our ArcGIS App which dynamically cached map tiles on the fly, so whilst it didn't pre-render all tiles, it provided a nice "Google Maps"-like UX for popular areas of our region.
    - Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
      Multimap and Streetmap in the UK both had prerendered tiles at multiple zoom levels years before Google. I'd developed a smooth "slippy map" at my then employer (waterscape.com) before Google Maps was released, using Flash and the Ming authoring interface, but IIRC Google released before we did.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > they had no competition when it was released There were multiple competing products when Google Maps was released, so they had competition. Google's product was simply better at than most alternatives at the time.
  - mythz 8y ago
    There was no real-time Consumer Maps App that came close to competing with Google Maps UX. Now there are multiple Consumer Mapping Services that replicate the instant utility of Google Maps, but it was revolutionary with no equal at the time.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      I agree (as I said) that Google offered a solution that was superior to the competition. My only point was that there was, in fact, competition.
      - mythz 8y ago
        As I'm being down voted without any discussion I'll remove why none of the existing competition did or could've done what Google Maps did and keep the insights I had at the time as a GEO developer to myself. Fly-by downvoters can continue believing the revisionist history they wish to. Feel free to believe Google Maps had competition (they didn't), nothing else at the time provided the same instant utility of Google Maps which basically ushered in the new category of "real-time search-based Consumer Maps" of which there are plenty now. Anything that existed previously would've needed a rewrite to achieve the same instant utility of Google Maps. Nothing without it could've become mainstream. The competition like ESRI still doesn't have it, but they're still focused on Internal/Enterprise Usage, they let you build GEO Maps but they don't let you build consumer maps that compete with Google Maps.
        JohnFen 8y ago
        > ...why none of the existing competition... You're agreeing with me here by admitting that there was existing competition. The rest of your remarks are about how much better Google's offering was to the competition, which is a point I've already agreed with.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  OpenStreetMap was started before Google Maps was launched and has never really tried to compete in the sense of providing a user portal. And then the data wasn't there for years and years also. And Google has lots more POI data in much of the world. (I say this as a contributor to OSM...)

Google Maps was a revolutionary product that popularized the category, they had no competition when it was released, at least now there's Apple Maps, Open Street Map, Bing Maps, Tencent Maps. I was developing with ESRI ArcGIS at the time, ESRI was a multi-billion dollar GEO company who had no product that even came close to the instant utility Google Maps launched with. The only other product that had a similar "Wow" factor around the same time was Keyhole which we were using before Google acquired them and used it to launch "Google Earth". If anything Google Maps spawned competition in the last decade, the existing competitors like ESRI are still developing their GEO products for Internal/Enterprise use, but now there are a number of competing consumer mapping services that provide the same utility and functionality of Google Maps from large technology companies that didn't have GEO as part of their competency like: Apple Maps, Bing Maps and Tencent Maps.

cpeterso 8y ago
I just finished reading "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but it has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal. The book is pretty interesting, but light on the technical details.
wool_gather 8y ago
While I agree about the utility, MapQuest pre-dated Google Maps by a fair bit.
- hacker_123 8y ago
  It's kind of amazing how well Google did without a first mover advantage here. MapQuest launched in 1996. Google Maps launched in 2005.
  - treis 8y ago
    The advantage of Google Search and the willingness to lose millions (billions?) Of dollars on a product is a powerful combination.
    - mattm 8y ago
      It didn't work for Google+
      - macintux 8y ago
        The only thing more powerful than money is the network effect.
- mythz 8y ago
  The instant utility was essential to its massive popularity, it basically ushered in the new era for real-time Consumer mapping. Everything preceding it was clunky, slow and "turn based". I can't recall what the state of MapQuest was at the time, but it's unlikely it had the real-time UX or utility of Google Maps. Was a real eye-opener of "so that's how you make Maps fast" at the time, just pre-render the entire world at multiple static zoom levels. Which wasn't an option (disk cost) for anyone developing their own in-house mapping Services at the time. For my next GEO project I did the next best thing and used their Google Maps API to change it to make map tile requests to our ArcGIS App which dynamically cached map tiles on the fly, so whilst it didn't pre-render all tiles, it provided a nice "Google Maps"-like UX for popular areas of our region.
  - Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
    Multimap and Streetmap in the UK both had prerendered tiles at multiple zoom levels years before Google. I'd developed a smooth "slippy map" at my then employer (waterscape.com) before Google Maps was released, using Flash and the Ming authoring interface, but IIRC Google released before we did.
JohnFen 8y ago
> they had no competition when it was released There were multiple competing products when Google Maps was released, so they had competition. Google's product was simply better at than most alternatives at the time.
- mythz 8y ago
  There was no real-time Consumer Maps App that came close to competing with Google Maps UX. Now there are multiple Consumer Mapping Services that replicate the instant utility of Google Maps, but it was revolutionary with no equal at the time.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    I agree (as I said) that Google offered a solution that was superior to the competition. My only point was that there was, in fact, competition.
    - mythz 8y ago
      As I'm being down voted without any discussion I'll remove why none of the existing competition did or could've done what Google Maps did and keep the insights I had at the time as a GEO developer to myself. Fly-by downvoters can continue believing the revisionist history they wish to. Feel free to believe Google Maps had competition (they didn't), nothing else at the time provided the same instant utility of Google Maps which basically ushered in the new category of "real-time search-based Consumer Maps" of which there are plenty now. Anything that existed previously would've needed a rewrite to achieve the same instant utility of Google Maps. Nothing without it could've become mainstream. The competition like ESRI still doesn't have it, but they're still focused on Internal/Enterprise Usage, they let you build GEO Maps but they don't let you build consumer maps that compete with Google Maps.
      - JohnFen 8y ago
        > ...why none of the existing competition... You're agreeing with me here by admitting that there was existing competition. The rest of your remarks are about how much better Google's offering was to the competition, which is a point I've already agreed with.
maxerickson 8y ago
OpenStreetMap was started before Google Maps was launched and has never really tried to compete in the sense of providing a user portal. And then the data wasn't there for years and years also. And Google has lots more POI data in much of the world. (I say this as a contributor to OSM...)