Google Maps Spawns Many Web 2.0 Interfaces

Well, strictly speaking they are “hacks” because there *is* no official Google Maps API.

All Google Maps customisation has been enabled as a result of non-Google reverse engineering and documentation efforts, there has been no official support.

–Phil.

I see your point, Phil. As a follow up question, when does an API become “official”? When the company says it does? Or provides official documentation?

Well, it’s an interesting question because the idea of an API, imo, is that it suggests some kind of stability and legitimacy.

So, an “official” API would be when the company says “We are providing this service, please use it.” Developers would expect their code based on the API wouldn’t suddenly break and that they wouldn’t be told “You shouldn’t do that.”

An “unofficial” API would be when there is some (mostly) stable method of accessing certain functionality but that it is not officially endorsed by the company concerned. The company may tacitly approve of the use of the API but reserves the right to break something and say “Well, you shouldn’t have been doing that.”

And finally I guess there’s the “unofficial un-API” where accessing functionality is extremely unstable and/or discouraged by technical or other means.

In the case of Google Maps the “API” such as it is seems to have moved from the last category to the second category.

Initially all the code was compressed and obfuscated (e.g. two letter variable names) and the function and variable names changed between code updates. Eventually some constant non-obfuscated items (e.g. _Point, _Map, _MapsApplication, _GOOGLE_SPEC) appeared and remained constant between code updates.

With a environment like Javascript in the browser it’s actually possible to “create” a more stable API by avoiding language identifiers completely and using introspection to find the desired objects on the fly. (I actually wrote a small helper tool to do this before the unofficial API appeared.)

Not sure if your question was rhetorical, here’s an answer anyway…

–Phil.

But what about sattelite photos? I did’nt found any “hacked” maps with sattelite photo. Is it possible to hack this feature?

There is one unofficial limit we learned about when launching the ApartmentRatings.com Google Maps API integration– you can’t have more than a few hundred map points otherwise the map gets slow and performance degrades. A limit isn’t documented anywhere, but if you try loading lots of points, there can be problems.

Some cities like Houston have 1,200+ apartments and users need to see ALL of them without having to reload the map and/or lose context. The workaround involved pre-fetching map points for nearby locations as the user browses around the map, and then dynamically bringing them into view when the user brings them into view. It’s hard to say whether this is a hack or just working around the API as it’s provided. It all depends on Google’s intent which nobody knows.

Interesting article about Google API Map. I need in put from anyone out there about how to use Google Map to display current world weather with google search embedded into it that will enable the users to search for a particular weather in any country. Thanks

Interesting article Joshua. Thank you.

“It’s only a matter of time before someone tries to leverage this type of thing into new business.”
There is another project : http://www.flashearth.com
It integrates :
Google Maps
Microsoft VE
Yahoo! Maps
Ask.com
OpenLayers
NASA Terra