Marrying Maps to Data for a New Web Service By JOHN MARKOFF http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/technology/18maps.html?pagewanted=print
SAN FRANCISCO, July 14 - In 1991, David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale, proposed using software to create a computer simulation of the physical world, making it possible to map everything from traffic flow and building layouts to sales and currency data on a computer screen. Mr. Gelernter's idea came a step closer to reality in the last few weeks when both Google and Yahoo published documentation making it significantly easier for programmers to link virtually any kind of Internet data to Web-based maps and, in Google's case, satellite imagery. Since the Google and Yahoo tools were released, their uses have been demonstrated in dozens of ways by hobbyists and companies, including an annotated map guide to the California wineries and restaurants that appeared in the movie "Sideways" and instant maps showing the locations of the recent bombing attacks in London. Later this summer, Microsoft plans to introduce a competing service, Virtual Earth, with software that programmers will be able to use in similarly creative ways. So far the uses have been noncommercial. But Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are creating the services with the expectation that they will become a focal point in one of the next significant growth areas in Internet advertising: contextual advertisements tied to specific locations. Such ads would be embedded in maps generated by a search query or run alongside them. While the companies have not yet disclosed how they intend to profit, one likely model is that the programming tools would be licensed on the basis of a revenue split from the advertising generated by use of the maps. "There are billions of dollars of commerce down the road," said Chris Churchill, chief executive of Fathom Online, a search-engine advertising firm based in New York. "It will all be an advertising-supported model, which is an epiphany for many people." Viewed broadly, the new services represent a shift to what is being described as "Web 2.0," a new generation of Internet software technologies that will seamlessly plug together, much like Lego blocks, in new and unexpected ways. "These are small pieces loosely joined," said Tim O'Reilly, chief executive of O'Reilly Media, a publishing and conference company based in Sebastopol, Calif. "People are creating new functionality by combining these different services." While location-based advertising revenue is only beginning to emerge from the new mapping services, the tools being made available, known as application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.'s, have already led to an outburst of innovative applications. This spring, even before the Google programming interfaces were published, a Silicon Valley programmer, Paul Rademacher, wrote software making it possible to display real estate listings from the bulletin-board site Craigslist overlaid on Google Maps. The resulting mash-ups, as the hybrid Web services are called, can be viewed at housingmaps.com. The site has already attracted more than a half-million viewers and now receives more than 10,000 visits a day. Virtually all the traffic has come from Internet word-of-mouth publicity; Mr. Rademacher said he had posted only a single brief notice on Craigslist asking for testers when he started the service. The idea came to Mr. Rademacher while he was driving around Silicon Valley looking for a home to rent. Before starting on his reconnaissance mission, he said he had painstakingly printed out the location of each rental listing on a different map. "I was driving around with a huge stack of paper," he recalled. "That was the 'Ah-ha' moment; it was obvious they should all be on a single map." Because the new hybrid services raise potentially thorny questions about how revenue might be shared as well as potential disputes over the ownership of digital information, Mr. Rademacher said he had decided to avoid accepting advertisements on his site and had done it purely as a proof of concept. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are taking different strategic approaches to map services. For example, while Google has encouraged enthusiastic experimenters like Mr. Rademacher, Microsoft is planning to cater to professional software developers, apparently calculating that they will produce work more likely to attract advertisers. "We're all about developers," said Stephen Lawler, general manager of Virtual Earth and MapPoint at Microsoft. "We don't want to have them hack at it. We want to support the developers." A strength of Google's new interface is its simplicity, potentially bringing mapping information within the grasp of any Web author. "That's why it's caught on, because it's more accessible than previous efforts," said Bret Taylor, the product manager for Google Maps. Google's tools are available not only for its more conventional maps but also for its recently released Google Earth software, which meshes satellite photography with road maps and other data. The resulting images can be annotated with directions and other data and also manipulated to produce the effect of motion in a 3-D aerial view. Microsoft also plans to make use of satellite data, but its interface will be based on a Web browser, not separately downloaded software like Google Earth. In contrast, Yahoo executives said they were skeptical about the value of satellite imagery, and the company was focusing instead on digital maps. Yahoo is hoping that groups of Web users will emerge to overlay its maps with restaurant reviews and other kinds of contributions. "This is not so much about creating a virtual world, but rather helping people with the real world," said Paul Levine, Yahoo's general manager for local services. Although much of the early experimentation with the new interfaces has been done by hobbyists, the new wave of consumer-oriented mapping services is shaking up the relatively staid market for what are known as geographic information systems, or G.I.S., which for more than a decade have been tailored largely for business customers. "In the past there was a grain-silo approach to controlling the technology," said Nathan Torkington, director of Where 2.0, a location technology and mapping conference held last month in San Francisco. "Now we're seeing the distribution of mapping technology." Moreover, although companies like Microsoft and MapQuest have pioneered programming interfaces for maps in the past, access has largely been offered on a transaction basis. For example, if a company developed a map application based on Microsoft's MapPoint mapping data, it would pay Microsoft for each map lookup request it generated. Mapping industry veterans said that in contrast to previous G.I.S. systems, the new programming tools make mapping accessible to just about any Web page designer. "To be honest, there isn't a lot new here," said Perry Evans, who founded MapQuest and is now chief executive of Local Matters, a local-search company based in Denver. "What's different is the accessibility and the fact that the number of participants in local target advertising is growing." Google's decision to encourage experimentation or "hacks" has led to widespread interest both from programmers and from the traditional G.I.S. industry. "I'm incredibly excited for all kinds of reasons," said Rupert Scammell, a software engineer for RSA Security, a software and consulting company, who has been experimenting with the Google programming tools and has created several user-interface enhancements for Google maps. "Doing this was deeply geeky until June 29, when Google reduced the hacking you had to do to just three or four lines of Javascript," he said. Google's decision to court the experimenters and hobbyists is significant, according to a number of Internet veterans, because this is the community that has traditionally been the source of much of the Net's innovation. "It's a classic example of this thesis that hackers show us the shape of the future," Mr. O'Reilly said. You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. 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