[vladk]

For 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.

[boundlessdreamz]

yeah.. never used satellite view except for "shit, i can se e my house on google maps!" type of amusement.

Also before Google and Google Earth, online maps for many countries were not very good. Those with the data was not very interested in creating online maps.

Speed and ease of use is what made maps a killer product for me

[andrewvc]

Satellite view's actually really useful for mountain biking. You can see a good number of trails on it (though sometimes its out of date).

[ghurlman]

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.

[adriand]

V3 of the Google Maps API is blindingly fast. Unbelievable how much they've sped up since V2 , and V2 was already fast.