[csmeder]

Really? 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, 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.

[ihatedigg]

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.)

[jacquesm]

> Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly?

I don't know... but it was actually an acquisition:

http://androidelectronics.com/tag/where-2-tech/

[cstuder]

The author updated the article with a special message for us: He basically appologizes that somebody submitted his blog post with a misleading title to Hacker News and emphasized again, that consistency isn't the reason that Google Maps is still #1 on the market.

[csmeder]

Okay, now I feel bad. I skimmed the article and posted a reaction. I am wrong for doing that. (Honestly, it was probably a reaction to how much I hated pre 2005 online mapping software and not the article. I guess it is such a strong hate that to this day it gets a reaction out of me...)

[streetlight]

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.

[barry82]

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.

[metamemetics]

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.

[andreyf]

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.