Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#1

Post by dlewis » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 8:44 PM UTC

Retiring real estate on Google Maps
google-latlong.blogspot.com

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#2

Post by davidw » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

Makes sense. They were never really going to compete with specialists like zillow.com.

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#3

Post by ericd » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

Hm, I didn't realize they were also deprecating the Base API in favor of vertical APIs. I suppose they're pulling back from their ambition to create an overarching taxonomy of everything in a single API?

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#4

Post by pchristensen » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:11 PM UTC

While I agree that there are better sites for looking at for-sale real estate, Google Maps was by far the best place for finding rentals for our recent move into the city of Chicago from the suburbs. I'll be sad to see it go, until a better apartment search consolidator pops up.

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#5

Post by drp » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:24 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #4

While I agree that there are better sites for looking at for-sale real estate, Google Maps was by far the best place for finding rentals for our recent move into the city of Chicago from the suburbs. I'll be sad to see it go, until a better apartment search consolidator pops up.

HotPads has most of the listings that are in Google Maps real estate and isn't using the Google Base API to get them.

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#6

Post by pmchiu » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:31 PM UTC

Based on this move I wonder how much truth there ever was to the rumor that Google was considering buying Trulia (http://kara.allthingsd.com/20091218/open-house-google-has-al...). The infrastructure they have is basically the same so they would have encountered the same infrastructure issues with the retirement of Google Base.

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#7

Post by pmchiu » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:32 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #4

While I agree that there are better sites for looking at for-sale real estate, Google Maps was by far the best place for finding rentals for our recent move into the city of Chicago from the suburbs. I'll be sad to see it go, until a better apartment search consolidator pops up.

I'm a huge fan of PadMapper. Does a great job for apartment search. Far better than what Google Maps was doing. http://www.padmapper.com

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#8

Post by btipling » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:34 PM UTC

I didn't even know that feature existed.

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#9

Post by bane » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:40 PM UTC

"In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings),"

Whatever happened to wanting to make all the world's data searchable?

Reasons 2 and 3 are pure cop outs.

Google has a real problem in that they seem to not be able to produce a best-in-breed class of software for highly competitive areas. If somebody came out with better search tomorrow would they just drop it?

Re: Retiring real estate on Google Maps

#10

Post by Vivtek » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

The low usage was due to the fact that nobody even knew it was there. I always watch real estate, and only saw these on Google Maps once. (And was instantly enamored, and now it's going away. Sigh.)