Google Maps live in Europe

Looks like Google Maps in much of Europe is officially (well, beta) open for business. I’m not sure who spotted this first: Philipp? The Radioactive Yak? ThomasB noticed many of the features early.

See, this is why everyone’s blog should have times down to the milli/micro/pico/femto-second, so you can tell who really noticed something first. I’ve been hanging around with SEOs too long, because my brain immediately goes to the “optimizing your clock skew so it looks like you posted something first” angle. Or maybe I’m just sleepy. πŸ™‚

Okay, show us something cool, European hackers! Can you beat the San Francisco Earthquake?? Check out those drop shadows, baby! (Thanks Nathan).

P.S. A lot of people worked really hard on this. Nice launch, Googlers.

39 Responses to Google Maps live in Europe (Leave a comment)

  1. You can have all the milli/micro/pico/femto-second’s you want – I’ll adjust my clock to 6 hours earlier and I’m always first πŸ˜‰

  2. There’s a nice little directory using Google maps for the Champagne region of France http://www.libation-unlimited.com/champagne-directory.aspx , with some of the subregion pages popping the street addresses on the sub maps. Early days though, early days…

  3. Where’s google maps gonna be next??

    What about little old New Zealand!!!
    http://maps.google.com/?ll=-41.277806,169.013672&spn=16.140931,35.595703&om=1

  4. Had a quick look, and well impressed… Loved the graphics on the SF earthquake site!

    BTW – The Google Maps of Europe look good too!

    Adam

  5. A bit pedantic, but it’s been live ‘in Europe’ for a long time, unless the UK isn’t a part of Europe πŸ˜‰ It’s really now live in ‘more of Europe’. European developers have already done some cool things with Google Maps UK (one of my clients is using it as a waypoint diagram for deliveries). Of course, there are those in the UK who’d love the fact we’re not considered a part of Europe, but…

  6. >Okay, show us something cool, European hackers! Can you beat the San >Francisco Earthquake?? Check out those drop shadows, baby! (Thanks >Nathan).

    Well, I could show you a map where all of europe is google.de, but that wouldn’t be very PC πŸ˜‰

    @Peter Cooper sind some smart person declared us to be the ‘old europe’ you are not really considered a part of europe anymore.
    Also you still have your old fashioned currency πŸ˜‰

  7. btw. is the favicon supposed to tell us anything?

  8. Who spotted this the first ?
    It’s us, first on a thread on Philipp’s blog
    and first posts about it (chronological, in French) :

    http://www.zorgloob.com/2006/04/google-maps-bientt-pour-leurope-la.asp (4/21 : “google maps for europe will lanch soon”)

    http://www.zorgloob.com/2006/04/google-maps-en-france-et-en-europe.asp (4/23 : scoop, directions works)

    http://www.zorgloob.com/2006/04/google-maps-france-europe-operationnel.asp (7 minutes after the launch !)

    http://www.zorgloob.com/2006/04/intgration-de-google-maps-france.asp (for maps.google.XXX)

    That’s all!

  9. my first thought was – will my mashup work?

    and so far it seems no,
    http://www.pillowsandpancakes.com/smap/Italy/Lazio/Rome

  10. >optimizing your clock skew so it looks like you posted something first

    Lmao…Matt … you need a break from conferences buddy…

    If it makes you feel better…Every question I get asked I find myself referring to thoughts of if the resulting effects may or may not be a high signal indicator of quality;)

  11. Jeremy Wong 黃泓量

    the google map api is cool.. my mind comes up with some ideas.. thanks for your reference to the weblog..

  12. The satellite pics seem to have a bit hit and miss, sometimes they’ll come down, sometimes it will say they aren’t available. Even at just one zoom level deeper than a European country. The new enhancements must have proved very popular πŸ™‚

  13. Existing Google Maps implementations (US, UK, Canada, China…) offer the possibility for companies to add/modify or delete their profiles via the “Google Local Business Center” (https://www.google.com/local/add/login); it would be nice to see this, and/or the possibility to load information via Google Base, be opened to the new countries as well.

  14. Just to add, its fantastic work, well done Googlers! Thank you very much πŸ˜€

  15. I should really be discussing this somewhere else, but since Matt brought it up…
    http://www.pillowsandpancakes.com/gmap2.html

    I managed to fix our mashp-up (just hard coded Rome for now).

    Google – you guys are awesome!!!!

    Paul

  16. Totally OT, but Matt, you seem to have acquired a favicon. C’mon you can do better than that, surely? πŸ˜€

    Make it a nice, silly competition : design MC a nice, new favicon. I bet you’ll get some cracking entries (and incredible link love; that will do the rounds of the geek-o-sphere in about, ooooh, 45 minutes)

  17. Hi Matt,

    Sorry to side track here, but i just read Tedster’s article on Hi Matt,

    Sorry to side track here, but i just read Tedster’s article on WMW, “Google Certified Domain Change”. I totally agree and think this is an excellent idea. My site recently changed from an established (and well ranked) domain to a new one for re-branding purposes. After a 301 redirect, we are still experiencing the “sandbox” effect. My life would be so much simpler if their was a tool in Sitmaps to do a registered domain change.

    What are your thoughts?

    Thanks,

    Scott

  18. Well, at least the German version seems to be VERY VERY Beta.

    – The data used seem to be at least 1 Year old, partially even older.
    (we moved about one year ago – appear with the old address – and nicely, the company news telling that we move to the new address is displayed as second item under the old )

    – It does not take into consideration that larger cities in Germany have streets with the same name. i.e. Wieland street exists 2 times in Berlin (in two different districts of the city), other street names in Berlin are used up to approx. 7 times)

    – it does not care about zip-code (i.e. to distinguish between different streets with the same name).

    – the icons on the map always seem to appear on the bigger (in terms of longer, not more important ) street.

    – it seems to to care about geo-location information (we have an ICBM entry for our page since about six months) – but it could be, that it does not know because of the old data used)

    So for bigger German cities, this thing is pretty useless

  19. I’n glad there’s finally a map for us, europeans !

  20. Keeping with off topic.. I made you some better favicons Matt:
    12

    πŸ™‚

  21. Hey, I can see my house from here!!! Good stuff πŸ™‚

    Yes, the pictures are at least from last summer… all the tree’s have leaves and our new car isn’t parked in front of the house πŸ˜‰

  22. Who had it first? πŸ™‚
    In the Google Blogoscoped forum, there was chatter about Google Maps Europe 7 days ago, the exact time stamp of DPNeals post being 2006-04-21 00:34:19 GMT+1

    http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/27644.html

  23. Hey,
    Glad to see maps lunching in Europe, does it have anything to do with Google SketchUp, i like the idea of SketchUp service, however i cannot see any potential commerial benefits of it.
    Or maybe i should already be offering 3D modelling services.

    All the best.

    CC

  24. Wow, that SF earthquake is cool – I started it running a few min ago and it’s still entertaining me lol

  25. not all the countries are included… ccc… not even the whole European Union!!!

  26. once again would also be good to see it in australia though – would also nice to be able to zoom in on people and insects?

  27. Steven Hambleton

    It would be infinitely useful to have an Australian Google Maps!

  28. Virtual Time Travel might come close. It has pre and post-earthquake videos of San Fransisco plotted on Google Maps.

  29. Cool graphics and a lot of useful stuff on the map.

  30. Nice ,fancy map! Thanks G!

  31. Having just checked out Microsoft’s (kind of) new live 3D mapping I can’t say I’m that impressed with Google maps any more. Maybe I’m biased because Google don’t have satellite imagery of my part of the UK whereas MS do.

  32. When will G map be up in Google China ?

  33. In google maps is north always on the top and south on the bottom

  34. I could almost spot my house in Δ±stanbul, its really exciting. But I guess some places aren’t completed.

  35. Always thought Googlers (plus some other people) deserve to be congratulated for their imaginative power.

  36. always thought googlers [plus other people] would descover this yes its da best i could see my house

  37. Sorry but still can’t see mine, although the street is there, some houses are missing! πŸ™‚

  38. Even though the name says “Dubai Property” John, i’m lucky enough to actually be from (and currently living in..) Ireland.

    Googles European HQ is here I believe, so I assume Google is aware of our existance!

    GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth seem to be forgetting however that there is more to Ireland than our Capital, Dublin. There’s some coverage of the larger towns in the west and south but the poor midlands has disappeared.

  39. GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth seem to be forgetting however that there is more to Ireland than our Capital, Dublin. There’s some coverage of the larger towns in the west and south but the poor midlands has disappeared.

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