The Dull Expiry Of The Google Maps Api

I accept been planning a corking Apr Fools joke for Google this year. On Apr 1st I was going to rename this weblog 'MapBox Mania' for the day. I planned to explicate this determination alongside a weblog post. The postal service would explicate that:

• there seems picayune sign of the Google Maps API squad returning from their 2 yr vacation
• that Google no longer seems interested inwards developing the Google Maps API
• at the same fourth dimension the MapBox squad has continued to nowadays together with has at 1 time popular off the maps API of alternative for near developers. 

It would accept been a funny Apr Fool's joke because in that place is to a greater extent than than an chemical cistron of truth inwards the thought that MapBox together with LeafletJS accept usurped Google Maps every bit the API of alternative for many map developers.


As developers increasingly plough to Google's competitors I accept struggled to abide by my daily quota of corking Google Maps based applications. This is 1 argue why I accept been reviewing to a greater extent than together with to a greater extent than maps built on other mapping platforms on Google .

For me the concluding major project design of banking concern complaint from the Google Maps API squad was dorsum inwards June 2012 alongside the unloosen of animated symbols. During that fourth dimension MapBox together with LeafletJS accept emerged every bit a major players inwards online mapping together with both look to travel continually innovating spell the Google Maps API squad look to travel happy exactly treading water.

Yesterday MapBox announced MapBox plugins, a collection of corking libraries that developers tin terminate add together to their maps past times exactly hotlinking to the origin files. The libraries include a marking clustering solution, Leaflet Draw (a host of map drawing tools),  Leaflet Fullscreen together with a publish of other useful libraries. You tin terminate cheque out the plugins inwards activeness on the MapBox Examples page.

The tendency inwards online mapping at the instant seems to travel towards both always to a greater extent than powerful information visualizations together with towards storey maps. The Guardian's In Flight – Interactive Map is a corking instance of both trends, using maps to visualize a lot of flying information together with to also say the storey of the history of commercial flight.

It was no surprise to me that The Guardian used LeafletJS to exercise this interactive. I accept no dubiousness that exactly 24 months agone the newspaper would accept used the Google Maps API for this sort of mapped interactive. Not whatever more.

The Google Maps API is dead, long alive MapBox.