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Arguably the real game-changer was GMail, which pre-dates GMaps. It introduced a lot of people to XHR, which was previously used only by people keen on XML/XSL.

• skrebbel 3y ago
  The innovation of Gmail was “so much storage you never have to delete emails again”. The UI wasn’t too different from contemporary incumbents such as Hotmail.
  • toyg 3y ago
    It had that as well, and undoubtedly it was the main attraction, but iirc it was already not refreshing the whole page when clicking on the email index to read a single email - if not at launch, very shortly after. They later added "html mode" for compatibility with older browsers.
  • zztop44 3y ago
    Storage was definitely the killer feature, but I remember thread view, good search and AJAX navigation to be significant improvements over eg hotmail at the time
• blowski 3y ago
  It was the Web 2.0 era. Delicious, Flickr, Digg, Netvibes, YouOS - they all had AJAX interfaces that used innovative techniques in JavaScript.
• unscaled 3y ago
  It wasn't Gmail that started XHR though. Gmail wasn't even first online email service to use XHR. The first app to use XHR, which is also the first email service to use XHR was Outlook Web Access. It's funny that Microsoft were the who were innovating with better features and a more coherent vision during the late browser wars, but they failed to capitalize on this innovation once they won the war and they could now just release IE6 with a shiny Media Bar and then fail to update it for 5 years. Nothing would ever go wrong, and no competitor could threat Microsoft, since all these toolbars everybody seem to adore are only compatible with Internet Explorer anyway. Yeah...