Awesome. Google Local + Google Maps is just brilliant.

It's a shame the shortcut keys keep firing up the Type-ahead find though.

fun, quick, and easy. Except things under the little info bubble look strange, some weird graphic overlay problem. Sure it will get fixed soon.

Thanks for the link, wouldn't have known about this otherwise! I've been wondering how long they would rely on Mapquest and Yahoo.

Oooh.. I just realized that when you resize your window, the map gets larger and more details are included. Makes me wonder why I have to click so much in MapQuest.

http://www.google.com/maplinedraw?width=38&height=307&path=w@kQ?EF?A|@@p@A|@?nA?\?b@?T?J?@CDAB?B?@D?H?B@@@@?@@FN?@@@?B?@?@?@ABADAB?B?HAB?@GV?@ABAj@?D@B@B@BABM?A?A@?B?@A@?@?@@@@@@??@?@A@A??@?D?@@@?A}oR

now that's a url.

OMG the world outside of north america has disappeared. I wonder what universe I've been transferred to.

...and no non-US maps, of course :/

Gotta wonder where the other 5.9 billion people live.

Very cool. Try dragging and dropping, double clicking, zooming in/out.
Unfortuantely the world consists of Amercia only. This must be a parallel universe... :-P

Impressive! One earth, one continent, one america, one country :D And oceans around...

But now I know, where you guys work: http://tinyurl.com/5crkd hihihi :D

How horribly patriotic. :/

The interface seems "rushed" to me.

Anders - it *is* "beta".

Well, it does have some non-US cities, like Montréal in Canada. And it even founds some sushi bar in my neighborhood I didn't know! ;)

What is it? Is it flash?

I am wondering where are those digital map data from. Only map24 can show my home address correctly, but not google, yahoo, msn.

Anyway, google has the best user interface.

How do the people of Digby give directions?

Google Maps - Digby, Nova Scotia

Now when you get to the intersection of Town of Digby and Town of Digby take a left. Now go through the next two intersections and take a right onto Town of Digby...

Try map24.com, much more detailed + cool java applet that does some cool zooming.

Nice if it works, only I just found out that firefox managed to forget how to find the jvm on my machine, again :-(. Curious how often this breaks down. Update java and boom firefox confused.

The difficulty with world wide maps is a lack of data. The early American leaders had some radical, dare one say revolutionary, ideas about goverment belonging to the people, so mapping data from Federal agencies is public domain. World wide that isn't the case, and most governents jealously protect their copyrights in general, and their maps in particular.

"The difficulty with world wide maps is a lack of data. The early American leaders had some radical, dare one say revolutionary, ideas about goverment belonging to the people, so mapping data from Federal agencies is public domain. World wide that isn't the case, and most governents jealously protect their copyrights in general, and their maps in particular."

Err... http://www.map24.com/

At least european countries would be doable for Google Maps, since we have "down-to-the-road" resolution there too. But yes, you might have special dictatorship regimes that don't allow these things, but seems like more like exceptions to the rule to me. I wouldn't really call american ideas about maps "revolutionary"...

Since Google doesn't have data of Canada and Mexico, these countries should not appear in the map, right? ;-)

What's new about Google Maps is not the geographic database; they're using a commercially available map from NAVTEQ, which is the same one that Yahoo Maps uses, so you shouldn't expect to see anything you can't see on Yahoo. Presumably the interface could be adapted to use a database with coverage of places outside the US.

That said, the coverage of Canada is less complete than it looks. Cities near the US border are covered well, which gets most of the big ones, but try zooming in on Edmonton and the map will go gray on you.

The coverage of businesses and such is odd; I guess it's doing some sort of Google relevance search on the keywords you type in. One consequence is that entering the name of a specific business will often bring up some of its competitors as well (I tried this with ice cream shops in the Boston area: typing "emack & bolios" gets you several of their locations, but also Christina's in Somerville). I can imagine proprietors being unhappy about that.

The coverage of government services, public transit, landmarks, etc. is very spotty, but maybe it's just that the vastly improved quality of the display and UI is raising my expectations for this-- it now seems like it should cover the same things that a good printed street atlas would, because it looks more like a good printed street atlas.