Google Maps

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Websites and the Internet

Google Maps
Screenshot of Google Maps showing a route from Toronto to Ottawa on the 400-Series highways.
URL	maps.google.com
Type of site	web mapping
Registration	no
Available language(s)	multilingual
Owner	Google
Created by	Google
Current status	active

Google Maps (for a time named Google Local) is a free web mapping service application and technology provided by Google that powers many map-based services including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder and embedded maps on third-party websites via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner, and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world.

A related product is Google Earth, a standalone program for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux which offers enhanced globe-viewing features.

Features

Google Maps features a map that users can pan (by dragging the mouse) and zoom (by using the mouse wheel). Users may enter an address, intersection or general area to quickly find it on the map.

Users can also search for businesses and attractions (for example, theatres, restaurants and hotels) in or near a given place. For example, a user can enter a query such as " Waffles in Ottawa" to find restaurants serving waffles in the city.

Like many other map services, Google Maps can generate driving directions between any pair of locations in the United States and Canada and within certain other countries. It shows turn-by-turn instructions, an estimate of the trip time, and the distance between the two locations. Since July 2007, a user can drag any point on the route to another location to add a waypoint, and instantly see the revised route and length while dragging.

Starting November 21, 2007, users with a Google account can adjust the location of markers for businesses and other destinations. According to a video posted on " YouTube" "Sometimes a location can be a little off on a map and your friends can't find you. Now you can fix that." If a user moves the marker by more than 200 meters, the change must go through moderation before it appears online.

Google Maps offers five viewing modes by default: Map (topographic and street map), Satellite (satellite and high-resolution aerial photographs), "Terrain" (geographic features in high relief with street overlay), Street View (ground level 360 degree view of certain streets, introduced on May 30, 2007), and Traffic' (traffic congestion maps).

The "link to this page" link on each Google Maps map targets a URL which can be used to find the location on the map at a later time. The latitude and longitude can be used as input to NASA World Wind or TerraServer-USA, which in some cases have higher-resolution imagery.

Satellite view

Google Maps provides high-resolution satellite images for most urban areas in Canada and the United States (including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) as well as parts of New Zealand, Australia, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Iraq, Japan, Taiwan, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and many other countries. Google Maps also covers many cities including Moscow, Istanbul, and most of India.

All the images shown in Google Maps' satellite mode are at least a year old and in some places like New Jersey date back to 2001. Various governments have complained about the potential for terrorists to use the satellite images in planning attacks. Google has blurred some areas for security (mostly in the United States), including the U.S. Naval Observatory area (where the official residence of the Vice President is located), and until recently, the United States Capitol and the White House (which formerly featured erased housetop). Other well-known government installations are visible including Area 51 in the Nevada desert.

With the introduction of an easily pannable and searchable mapping and satellite imagery tool, Google's mapping engine prompted a surge of interest in satellite imagery. Sites were established which feature satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks, including such novelties as "large type" writing visible in the imagery, as well as famous stadia and unique earth formations.

Although Google uses the word "satellite", some of the high-resolution imagery is aerial photography taken from airplanes rather than from satellites.

Implementation

Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the side panel and map - the page is not reloaded. Locations are drawn dynamically by positioning a red pin (composed of several partially-transparent PNGs) on top of the map images.

The technique of providing greater user-interactivity by performing asynchronous network requests with Javascript and XMLHttpRequest has recently become known as Ajax. Maps actually uses XmlHttpRequest sparingly, preferring a hidden IFrame with form submission because it preserves browser history. It also uses JSON for data transfer rather than XML, for performance reasons. These techniques both fall under the broad Ajax umbrella.

The GIS (Geographic Information System) data used in Google Maps are provided by Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ and MAPIT MSC, Malaysia, while the small patches of high-resolution satellite imagery are largely provided by DigitalGlobe and its QuickBird satellite, with some imagery also from government sources. The main global imagery base called NaturalVue was derived from Landsat 7 imagery by MDA Federal (formerly Earth Satellite Corporation). This global image base provides the essential foundation for the entire application.

Extensibility and customization

As the Google Maps code is almost entirely JavaScript and XML, some end-users reverse-engineered the tool and produced client-side scripts and server-side hooks which allowed a user or website to introduce expanded or customised features into the Google Maps interface.

Using the core engine and the map/satellite images hosted by Google, such tools can introduce custom location icons, location coordinates and metadata, and even custom map image sources into the Google Maps interface. The script-insertion tool Greasemonkey provides a large number of client-side scripts to customize Google Maps data, and the mygmaps.com website provides an interface for easily adding your own set of locations and viewing them on Google Maps.

Combined with photo sharing websites such as Flickr, a phenomenon called "memory maps" emerged. Using copies of the Keyhole satellite photos of their home towns or other favorite places, the users take advantage of image annotation features to provide personal histories and information regarding particular points of the area.

Google Maps API

Google created the Google Maps API to facilitate developers integrating Google Maps into their web sites with their own data points. It is a free service, which currently does not contain ads, but Google states in their terms of use that they reserve the right to display ads in the future.

By using the Google Maps API you can embed the full Google Maps on an external web site. Start by creating an API Key, it will be bound to the web site and directory you enter when creating the key. Creating your own map interface involves adding the Google JavaScript code to your page, and then using Javascript functions to add points to the map.

When the API first launched, it lacked the ability to geocode addresses, requiring you to manually add points in (latitude, longitude) format. This has since been rectified.

At the same time as the release of the Google Maps API, Yahoo! released their own Maps API. Both were released to coincide with the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference. Yahoo! Maps lacks international support, but included a geocoder in the first release.

As of October 2006, Google Gadgets' Google maps implementation is much easier to use with just the need of one line of script. The drawback is that it is not as customizable as the full API.

In late 2006, Yahoo began a campaign to upgrade their maps, to compete better with Google Local and other online map companies. Several of the maps used in a survey were similar to Google maps.

Google Maps actively promotes the commercial use of their API. One of its earliest adopters at large scale are real estate mashup sites. Google's case study is about Nestoria, a property search engine in the UK and Spain.

Google Maps for Mobile

In late 2006, Google introduced a Java application called Google Maps for Mobile, which is intended to run on any Java based phone or mobile device. Most, if not all, web based features are available from within the application. On November 28th, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released. It introduced a GPS-like location service that does not require a GPS receiver. As of April 20, 2008, this service is available for Windows Mobile | Palm OS | Nokia/Symbian (S60 3rd edition only) | Symbian OS (UIQ v3).

Google Maps parameters

In Google Maps, the URL parameters may be tweaked to offer views and options not normally available through on-screen controls.

For instance, the maximum zoom level offered is normally 18, but if higher-resolution images are available, changing the z parameter, which sets the zoom level, will allow the user to access them, as in this view of elephants or this view of people at a well deep in Chad, Africa using the parameter z=23.

A list of Google Maps parameters and their descriptions is available.

Development history

Google Maps was first announced on the Google Blog on February 8 2005, and was located at http://maps.google.com/. It originally only supported users of Internet Explorer and Mozilla web browsers, but support for Opera and Safari was added on February 25, 2005. Currently ( July 1, 2006) Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 0.8+, Safari 1.2.4+, Netscape 7.1+, Mozilla 1.4+, and Opera 8.02+ are supported. It was in beta for six months before becoming part of Google Local on October 6, 2005.

Google's use of Google Maps

The main Google Maps site includes a local search feature, finding businesses of a certain category in a geographic area.

Google Ditu

Google Ditu (谷歌地图 lit. "Google Map") was released to the public on February 9, 2007, and replaced the old Google Bendi (谷歌本地 lit. "Google Local"). This is the Chinese localized Google Maps and Google Local services only cover mainland China.

There are some differences in frontier alignments between Google Ditu and Google Maps. On Google Maps, sections of the Chinese border with India, Pakistan and Tajikistan are shown with dotted lines, indicating areas or frontiers in dispute. However, Google Ditu shows the Chinese frontier strictly according to Chinese claims with no "dotted lines" anywhere. For example the area now administered by India called Arunachal Pradesh (referred to as "South Tibet" by Chinese official sources) is shown inside the Chinese frontier by Google Ditu. Google Ditu also shows Taiwan and the surrounding islands as part of China.

Google Moon

In honour of the 36th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, Google took public domain imagery of the Moon, integrated it into the Google Maps interface, and created a tool called Google Moon. By default this tool, with a reduced set of features, also displays the points of landing of all Apollo spacecraft to land on the Moon. It also included an easter egg, displaying a Swiss cheese design at the highest zoom level, which Google has since removed. A recent collborative project between NASA Ames Research Centre and Google is integrating and improving the data that is used for Google Moon. This is the Planetary Content Project. Google Moon was linked from a special commemorative version of the Google logo displayed at the top of the main Google search page for July 20, 2005 ( UTC) webarchive.org.

Google Mars

Google Mars provides a visible imagery view, like Google Moon, as well as infrared imagery and shaded relief ( elevation). Users can toggle between the elevation, visible, and infrared data, in the same manner as switching between map, satellite, and hybrid modes of Google Maps. In collaboration with NASA scientists at Arizona State University, Google has provided the public with data collected from two NASA Mars missions, Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey. At present, the Google Earth desktop client cannot access the data, but the feature is in development.

It is currently not known if Google Mars will become a standalone program.

NASA has made available a number of Google Earth desktop client maps for Mars at http://onmars.jpl.nasa.gov/.

More Mars data sets with more recent data are available at Google Maps based interface at http://jmars.asu.edu/maps provided by Arizona State University

Google Ride Finder

Google launched an experimental Google Maps-based tool called Ride Finder, tapping into in-car GPS units for a selection of participating taxi and limousine services. The tool displays the current location of all supported vehicles of the participating services in major US cities, including Chicago and San Francisco on a Google Maps street map.

Google Transit

In December 2005, Google launched Google Transit. This is a web application (listed in Google Labs), that plans a trip using public transportation options. Google Transit launched with support for Portland, Oregon. Information for Eugene, Oregon; Honolulu, Hawaii; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Seattle, Washington; and Tampa, Florida was added on September 27 2006, with more added since including adding cities in Canada, Europe, and Japan. The service calculates route, transit time and cost, and can compare the trip to one using a car.

Google My Maps

In April 2007, My Maps was a new feature added to Google's local search maps. My Maps lets users and businesses create their own map by positioning markers, polylines and polygons onto a map. The interface is a straightforward overlay on the map. A set of eighty-four pre-designed markers is available, ranging from bars and restaurants to webcam and earthquake symbols. Polyline and Polygon colour, width and opacity are selectable. Maps modified using My Maps can be saved for later viewing and made public (or marked as private), but cannot be printed.

Each element added to a My Map has an editable tag. This tag can contain text, rich text or HTML. Embeddable video and other content can be included within the HTML tag.

Upon the launch of My Maps there was no facility to embed the created maps into a webpage or blog. A few independent websites have now produced tools to let users embed maps and add further functionality to their maps. This has been resolved with version 2.78.

Google Street View

On May 25, 2007, Google released Street View, a new feature of Google Maps which provides 360° panoramic street-level views of various U.S. cities. On this date, the feature only included five cities, but has since expanded to twenty-three, with plans for more U.S. and Canadian cities in the future. Some cities, like San Francisco, are in high resolution, while other cities are limited in resolution. The feature has raised privacy concerns.

Copyright

Google Maps Terms and Conditions state that usage of material from Google Maps is regulated by Google Terms of Service and some additional restrictions. Terms and Conditions, among others, state:

For individual users, Google Maps [...] is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. For business users, Google Maps is made available for your internal use only and may not be commercially redistributed [...]

Criticism

Street map overlays, in some areas, may not match up precisely with the corresponding satellite images. The street data may be entirely erroneous, or simply out of date:

The biggest challenge is the currency of data, the authenticity of data," said Google Earth representative Brian McLendon. In other words: The main complaints the Google guys get are "that's not my house" and "that's not my car." Google Maps satellite images are not in real time; they are several years old.

As a result, Google has recently added a feature to edit the locations of houses and businesses.

Restrictions have been placed on Google Maps through the apparent censoring of locations deemed potential security threats. In some cases the area of redaction is for specific buildings, but in other cases, such as Washington, DC, the restriction is to use outdated imagery. These locations are fully listed on Satellite images censored by Google Maps.

Google Street View has also gained a significant amount of controversy in the days following its release; privacy concerns have erupted due to the uncensored nature of its panoramic photographs.

Canadian driving directions where the starting address is close to the US border have switched to imperial measurements, giving all directions in feet and miles, though the rest of Canada receives directions in standard metric. There is also no option to use the metric system in the United Kingdom, despite it being used officially alongside the Imperial system.

Sometimes objects on Google Maps are hidden by normal clouds. For example, the mast of Arbrä Transmitter near Bollnäs in Sweden is hidden under a cloud .

A further weakness is that date and time when the photograph is made are not available. If it were, it would be possible to determine the height of a tall structure by measuring the length of its shadow.

Also, the map uses the Mercator projection, which is increasingly distorted towards the polar regions.

Popular culture

• In the SNL Digital Short Lazy Sunday starring Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell, the two comedians rap about a trip to the movies and mention "Google Maps is the best", "True dat", and "Double True" in a writing scheme similar to that of Google. This was in comparison to Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest.
• In the Simpsons episode " Marge Gamer", Marge used Google Maps to view her house from above. Unlike Google Maps, the satellite view is shown live and the URL that Marge used was www.google.com instead of maps.google.com.
• In the South Park episode " The Snuke", Stan suggests the Counter Terrorist Unit-like staffers search Google Maps instead of Mapquest because it has live traffic.
• In the Australian radio show Get This, the hosts make constant references to using Google Earth to ' downblouse' unsuspecting women.
• In the movie Shooter, an FBI agent talks about having used Google Maps.
• The movie Crank uses Google Maps satellite images, with the Google logo clearly visible, in many scenes transitioning between different locations.