I bet you most of the users did not notice this difference. What they noticed probably is speed, and the fact that you can scroll and move around the map without clicking the side arrows (mapquest style).
Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
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Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#12Remember he is not saying consistency is the only feature that make GoogleMaps #1
Honestly, I doubt it's got anything to do with it.
The reason Google Maps is #1 is that, at the time, it was far better than anything else. And nobody has offered an equally compelling leap since.
To move masses, you need equally massive advancements in usefulness (also, marketing).
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#13Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
2nd sentence: What I’m about to tell you is probably not the real reason why Google Maps is the “Number 1” mapping service on the web (in terms of site traffic)—but I do believe that it’s one of the reasons why.
Me thinks you assumed too much.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#14Remember he is not saying consistency is the only feature that make GoogleMaps #1
Honestly, I doubt it's got anything to do with it. The reason Google Maps is #1 is that, at the time, it was far better than anything else. And nobody has offered an equally compelling leap since. To move masses, you need equally massive advancements in usefulness (also, marketing).
You are not wrong.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#15For me, and many I know it was speed. Scroll speed, zoom speed, search speed. Even today GMaps wins in that category. I barely ever use satellite view for anything but casual amusement.
It's there that Bing really wins out for me... Bing's "bird's eye" view is perfect for checking out locations before you go for visual cues.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#16Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
It's not that surprising. Maps that refreshed the page when you needed to move X miles south got tons of ad revenue, and JavaScript was still considered a "simple scripting language" by most.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#17Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
Google did maps right, and eventually yahoo and map quest followed, but by the time they did it was too late everyone was using google maps and had no reason to switch.
Actually as soon as February 2009, MapQuest was still #1 in maps: http://gislounge.com/mapquest-still-number-one/
(Google Maps was released in early 2005.)
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#18Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Consistency is one of the reasons why the maps are no longer horrible .
User interface is far more important. The majority of use cases were people looking for directions to places in non-satellite view.
Google maps was the first one where you could simply drag a fullscreen map around with your mouse and zoom with mouse wheel.
I suspect it wasn't until after this user interface enhancement that people even bothered exploring satellite views much.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#19I don't really agree with the author's proposal, although it is well explained. As many others pointed out, Google's usability was (and maybe still is) much better than the others.
Another big point in Google's favour is how their maps look. Back when Google Maps came out, the other maps were bitmapped and horrible to look at on the screen and in print. The quality of Google's maps is much more like what you see in a proper street directory. And they've made it look that good at every zoom level. Quite amazing.
I've never used Bing Maps, so it was interesting to learn in this article that they've improved the design of their default map view recently. It looks good. If the appearance of Google's maps was some part of their success, we should see Bing's market share rise in the future if they can convincingly beat Google in this area.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#20Looking through all the comparisons, Google Maps is also the only non-ugly one.