Google Maps and Earthware

At Earthware we often favour Google Maps over Bing Maps or any other mapping API for travel mapping solutions. The travel tours or holiday properties that our clients want to showcase in their travel maps tend to be rural and Bing Maps’ bird’s eye imagery has less value to them, therefore Google Maps often offers the best mapping solution.

For example, our client, Audley Travel, a high end specialist travel agency, wanted highly visually engaging travel maps for their new website. However, their holidays are often in remote places which favoured the imagery available via a Google maps solution.

About Google Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application provided by Google, free (for non-commercial use), that powers many map based services. Its use is especially prevalent in travel and property websites in the UK and globally where Bing Maps have historically struggled to get a foothold. It offers street maps, route planner and the recently launched Google ‘Street View’. Google created the Google Maps API to allow developers to integrate Google Maps into their websites with their own data points. Whilst it is currently a free service, and does not contain ads, Google states in their terms of use that they reserve the right to display ads in the future. This is a key consideration when deciding which mapping API to use and how to license it if you do decide to use Google Maps (you don’t want adverts for your competitors to suddenly appear in your website).

For more information, please see our blog articles on Google Maps or contact us to find out more about how you might create amazing web based mapping experiences using Google Maps.