Yahoo! Maps: map globally

26 March 2006 @ late morning | Comments (1)

Almost five months have now passed since Yahoo! first introduced the new (yet another beta) Yahoo! Maps and its APIs, allowing developers to tap into the power of Flash, ActionScript, and JavaScript. Its unveiling was accompanied by much developer hype and followed by the release of some other pretty killer developer tools, such as JSON support and the User Interface Library.

So with all the praise for Yahoo!‘s amazing tools and maps, why are there still barely any interesting applications in their Map Applications Gallery?

• Only U.S & Canada are supported
• No satellite or hybrid view

I cannot really speculate on what licensing issues Yahoo! has been facing, but I am at a loss to explain why Yahoo! Maps still lack both international data and satellite imagery. High-zoom satellite imagery is a little tricky with regards to licensing, but Yahoo! could at least use NASA’s Blue Marble satellite imagery (ala Windows Local Live) for low- to medium-zoom levels. Perhaps Yahoo! doesn’t want to share a map aesthetic with Microsoft’s maps, but at least it’d get them in the game.

For developers and users alike, this is a really big deal. I have attempted to use the Yahoo! Maps API for several projects, wanting to utilize the flexibility that the Flash/JS interface provides. But in every circumstance I’ve run into the same problem: What about the rest of the world?

The new Yahoo! Maps are sexy, yes. But until Yahoo! adds — at the very least — flat international maps with country boundaries, Google Maps is all there is.

Wayfaring, the epitome of social mapping applications, illustrates this case perfectly. Without international coverage, it would not survive as a social application; without satellite view, it would be impossible to view a marker’s location with relation to its surrounding natural and manmade landmarks.

In the last year, Yahoo! has acquired Flickr, Upcoming.org, and del.icio.us, as well as vastly improved their developer resources. But if Yahoo! Maps continues to be neglected, it’s possible that six months from now map developers will have lost interest and Jeremy Zawodny will be sad about yet another Yahoo! product.

April 12, 2006:

Woohoo! Looks like someone out there was listening because satellite, hybrid, and international maps were all just introduced today with Yahoo! Maps API v3. Expect a large increase in development around their API in the coming months.

Additionally, they’ve expanded the Geocoding API to allow for global geocoding. I can’t begin to describe how killer this is; no more applications with 1/2 Yahoo! geocoding and 1/2 something else… now it’s all Yahoo!, baby.

I’m convinced that — with time to work out the post-release kinks — this will now become a dominant mapping platform. After seeing the steady improvement in communication and bug fixes from the Yahoo! team, this shouldn’t take long. Thanks, Yahoo!