[idoh]

Every once in a while some company comes out with a really great solution to a problem. The most recent was with hipmunk and flights. When I used hipmunk for the first time, I had that feeling that after them, the whole landscape had changed.

I got the same feeling when I saw google maps - it was so far ahead of everyone, and not just technically but design-wise too. The same thing happened with mail. So on one hand you could say that their maps and mail are sort of standard, and that other companies have similar offerings.

But on the other hand, who set the standard in the first place?

[moopark]

Slippy maps are great. The UX was a great idea, but it was almost entirely dependent on having the technology and infrastructure to implement them, including asynchronous map tiling client side.

I don't think that is in conflict with my original statement, and the remainder of the Maps API is truly bad. I regularly make the mistake of using the scroll wheel, get stuck trying to figure out how to show (or hide) street view, etc.

Regarding GMail -- it's a poor approximation of an existing, very basic desktop experience. There's not a lot of design innovation there, if you look beyond webmail.