Google Maps - New and Improved

Wow, Google’s done it again. They’ve upped the ante on web-based mapping and no doubt this will be even better once it is in the iOS app.

Here’s a quick tour.

Using the next step: search for Sushi, Boston, we get

When you click on any of the place pins on the map, you get an info card with options to give directions, save the location to your contacts, jump to Street View, access reviews and even read the menu!

I searched for Apple Store, Dallas, and I got two locations near downtown, with additional features showing on the info card. After clicking the place pin for the Knox Street location, I got an info card that shows the hours today and has a few links to related items. For example: Computer Repair Service gives a list of places that do computer repairs. Genius Bar wasn’t so helpful, as it just highlighted bars all over the Dallas map.

Clicking iPad 2 shows a list of stores, including an ad from Best Buy. No idea why iPad 2 is the choice and not just iPad since the iPad is a couple of versions beyond the iPad 2, unless based on Google’s algorithm, iPad 2 > iPad (which no longer has a number to say it’s iPad 3 or 4).

The Photos link gives you a cool view like this:

… the animation getting to the photo is really fun! :-)

Cool Stuff

• Clicking back (in Chrome) takes you back to the previous map state, not the previous browser page as with some map sites
• Animation is sweet
• Lots of content in the maps, especially the place pins
• Beautiful maps
• Did I mention the animation?

Bummers

• Related links are still weak implementations, if this is going to require human intervention tasking, they have a lot of work to do and if they can get the algorithms ironed out, they have a masterpiece
• Limited to invitation-only Gmail/Google accounts, I couldn’t even request for my hosted by Google/Gmail domains.

More to come, this looks headed for a bright future!