Google also said that the ads could be integrated into their new Mapplets map mashup making service on a revenue sharing basis. Users would be paid by the click, similar to the current Adsense offerings, and could limit the number of sponsor ads that would appear in their Mapplets or turn them off completely. "This is something you will completely control," said Google engineer Andrew Eland at Google's Developer Day in London yesterday.

Google's preview Mapplets might give a hint of how the service could work. Two of Google's example Mapplets are commerce-oriented: movie showtimes and real estate search. It is easy to see how Google could offer company's paid preferential treatment on this type of maps mashup. These paid placements would not necessarily resemble current Adsense text ads, but could be more fluidly integrated into the look and feel of Google Maps.

Like other Adwords ads, map ads could be highly targeted, not only by subject matter or keyword, but also by location.

Trend for MapQuest: Down

Overall, this looks like a good update for MapQuest, but these updates are only minor and won't be enough to win back users who have abandoned the service. Our friends at Experian Hitwise were kind enough to provide us with fresh traffic data for Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps and Yahoo Maps. While MapQuest managed to edge out a slight lead in February, Google Maps now owns 45% of the market, while MapQuest's market share has fallen to 35%. Yahoo Maps is now at 6.6% (down from 10.2% in February) and Bing Maps owns 4.3% of the market (up from 3.6%).

For many Internet users, MapQuest is still synonymous with online mapping, but this group is shrinking and Google's relentless pace of releasing updates and new features isn't likely to let up anytime soon.

Still, for all the beauty of Google's directions, "street view," and "search nearby," the top-down views of our world have always been a bit fuzzy and squint-inducing. Until now. Thanks to Google hitching a ride on GeoEye-1, that's all about to change. And today, we saw the first example of what's to come.

Wired has posted the first photo from GeoEye, and it's amazingly crisp.

Here's a comparison between the new satellite image and the current resolution (GeoEye-1 image, top):

Looking for more resolution than that? You're going to need to get security clearance. The US Federal Government restricts distribution of higher-resolution imagery, even though the image the satellite is capturing has a more detailed resolution (43 cm).

Currently, there is no specific date for when the imagery will be added to Google Maps and Google Earth.

One thing is for sure: When this new high-resolution imagery becomes available, Google Maps sightseeing will get a great deal more interesting.

Walking directions are available everywhere Google offers driving directions.

Currently, Google is the only mapping service that offers walking directions. Ask.com used to offer walking directions, but that feature went away when Ask migrated away from its own mapping platform to Microsoft's Virtual Earth three weeks ago.

While Microsoft's Virtual Earth updated its imagery with another major (14 terabyte) update today, it's routing functions have not seen any updates lately. In terms of overall functionality and user interface design, it is very much on par with Google Maps (and, in terms of its imagery, often much better than Google Maps). However, it never quite achieved the popularity of Google Maps.

The walking directions are currently only available through the web version of Google Maps. As of now, you can not chose them in the iPhone Maps application, though that would obviously be a very useful feature to add and hopefully Apple and Google will do so soon.

"The embedded maps have the full functionality of Google Maps -- they provide satellite view, map view or hybrid view, and users can click and drag the maps around."

A post at the Google Operating System blog links to a couple of third party services that already offer easy Google Maps embedding, such as My Maps Plus (a map from which is embedded below). It is safe to assume that the future of these services may be in jeopardy unless they can offer functionality beyond what Google has planned.

According to Hitwise's Heather Hopkings, Google came very close to catching up with MapQuest in December, but somehow, MapQuest managed to gain some ground again in January. Currently, MapQuest holds 39.49% of the market share in the US and Google Maps is at 35.67%.

Update: Hitwise just supplied us with a new graph that includes data for Live Maps and Yahoo Maps.

What is even more interesting, though, is that most of MapQuest's traffic comes from 'brand searches' - that is users who specifically search for 'mapquest.' Eight out of the top ten search terms leading to MapQuest were variations of its brand name and they accounted for 62% of MapQuests' visitors. For Google Maps, only two out of the top ten search terms were branded and they only accounted for 4.2% of Google Maps' traffic.

Old Habits

It is quite amazing how MapQuest manages to hang on to its top position. Google Maps gets over 60% of its traffic from Google itself, yet it seems that using MapQuest, even though it is barely keeping up with the latest technological advancements on the Internet, is still synonymous with online mapping for a majority of Internet users.

In many ways, this means that a service like Microsoft's Live Maps, which is holding on to a very distant third fourth place, is fighting an uphill battle, even though it provides a number of features like its Birds Eye View that even Google Maps doesn't have. For a lot of mainstream users, however, having access to the latest features doesn't necessarily translate into a reason to switch away from an established service.

To get directions, users can now click on "Get Directions" in the newly added blue bar on top of the maps. This redesigned interface for getting directions is actually a bit easier to use, though finding the 'walking' directions is now a tad bit harder as well, as it is hidden in a drop-down menu instead of always being on screen as a link on top of the directions.

Google is obviously putting a lot of resources into its mapping product and given how important location based services are going to become in the future, this seems like a wise long-term investment. Google's competitors are, of course, not sleeping either. Microsoft also constantly updates Live Maps and it has become a worthy competitor to Google Maps - especially with its high-resolution "bird's eye" views.

However, Live Maps suffers from the same branding problem as the rest of Microsoft's Live brand and with Google slowly expanding Street View into more rural areas, the new walking directions, and constantly updated maps, Google might just overtake Mapquest one day as the Internet's most popular mapping destination.

Draggable routes are nothing new, of course. Google Maps has offered this feature for quite a while. Compared to Google Maps, the Microsoft implementation of this feature is slightly more difficult to use. Google Maps always displays a little button on a route that moves relative to the user's cursor. On Bing Maps, users have to be more precise when it comes to grabbing a point on their route where they want to deviate from the computed route. Still, this is a welcome addition to Bing Maps.

Embeds

Embedding Bing Maps is now as easy as clicking one button and copying and pasting the embed code. The best feature here is the ability to customize these embeds. Users can select different sizes, whether to display a static or draggable map, as well as different map styles (road map vs. satellite imagery). Bing Maps also generates a link to the map that can be shared by email.

As Google continues to enhance its mapping products and now even produces its own map data in the US, Bing Maps and others will have to stay on their toes. This update to Bing Maps mostly brings Microsoft back on par with Google with regards to features.

Bing always offered a number of features that Google didn't offer, including high-resolution aerial photos, and a Google Earth-like 3D view with 3D models in the browser. Currently, however, Google is adding more features (like traffic for more roads) and improving its maps at a faster rate than anybody else and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft will be able to keep up with this pace.

The Google Maps team just announced the addition of a new feature to Google Maps: the ability to contribute to and edit maps through Google Map Maker. Users can now edit and moderate various map features, including roads, lakes, power lines, and bike trails among others.

While Google already allows users to create and share new map layers through 'My Maps', this is the first time it is actively looking for help in creating maps (almost) from the ground up.

Basically, these are all countries that could, as the Google Maps team puts it, "benefit tremendously from local knowledge and expertise that you and other map makers posses, and we're excited to see how you put that to use."

Those maps that are currently available for editing vary greatly in the detail already available for them. Barbados already has a relatively complete set of roads, while Vietnam is almost completely devoid of any details outside of the major cities and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are nothing but gray blobs on the map so far.

The editing functions of Map Maker are extremely easy to use and it is probably only a question of time before more users start using their local knowledge to add to these often bare maps. For most of us, however, the real question is when Google will open up the rest of its maps for editing at this low level - or if this is even desirable.

Last week's update to Google Maps introduced new ways to report errors for Google Maps users, so Google is clearly thinking about using a crowdsourcing approach to mapping for Google Maps. Google also announced that it now includes data from a number of US government organizations like the Forest Service and the US Geological Survey in its maps.

In the US, the Census Bureau creates a fairly accurate base map, and this data is available freely and represents the core data set for the OpenStreetMap project. With Map Maker, Google also offers an easy-to-use mapping product that even non-geographers can use to create and edit maps and which Google has already employed to let its users create maps for countries where no accurate maps existed until now.

While the new maps that were launched last week also include new errors, the overall detail of the maps has clearly increased and now even includes data for the boundaries of land parcels in some municipalities.

Why?

The question, of course, is why Google plans to make its own maps now. For one, chances are that Google is currently paying Tele Atlas a lot of money for using its maps. Mapping services are notoriously protective of how their data can be used, which is one of the reasons Apple can't offer turn-by-turn directions in the built-in mapping application on the iPhone, for example. Google probably wants to be free to do whatever it wants with its maps without having to worry about licensing issues.

By providing its own maps and an API for others to use these maps, Google could potentially become a major competitor to Tele Atlas and Navteq now, and if Google continues to make these maps easily available to developers without cumbersome licensing restrictions, it could bring radical change to the mapping business.

The new version includes greater detail in listings, aggregated reviews and photos of restaurants and other businesses, scrollable maps and more.

Support for mobile search in China was also announced today, at least for web, images, news and Live Spaces - maps in China are still in the "coming soon" category.

While the mobile webpage for Live Search is nice, it's no where near as impressive as the Windows Mobile and Blackerry client app from Live. Available at LiveSearchMobile that app is jaw dropping. In addition to all of the features available in the mobile browser, the client app also offers solid speech recognition for search, very smooth scrolling of full-screen maps and easy road, aerial or traffic views of your map.

While that service isn't perfect either (did you know there's no pizza on Hawthorne Street in Portland, Oregon?), to say that mobile search and mapping has a huge future is both obvious and an understatement. The Live.com team is one to watch in this space.

Update: We just heard back from Google - here is the official statement about which phones will be able to contribute traffic data to Google Maps:

Google Maps products that include location services will make use of this information for traffic. This includes the downloadable Google Maps for Mobile product for mobile phones as well as the Google Maps application for Android phones. One exception is the maps functionality that Google provides for the iPhone - the iPhone does not provide any location data that is used for traffic crowdsourcing at this time.

Google is obviously aware of the potential privacy issues involved here, but according to Dave Barth, the product manager for Google Maps, Google will "find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it." This way, nobody can find out where a car actually came from.

According to Google, enough users use these phones to make this project feasible. In my experience however, the data for these arterial roads isn't quite as trustworthy as the data for highways.

Overall, though, this is a great project and the more users are aware of it, the better the data will become. However, it is also worth noting that some GPS manufacturers have been using data from their users' GPS systems to crowdsource traffic data for years, though chances are that Google will be able to recruit more users and hence create a better experience for its users.

If you look at the new maps today, the most obvious changes are better data for park boundaries and the trails and paths that now appear prominently on the maps. In addition, if you see a mistake on a map (a bike trail that is marked as a road, for example), you can simply right-click on the road and the drop-down menu will now include the option to report a problem (there is also a link at the bottom of the map). Sadly, this feature doesn't allow users to redraw maps themselves. Instead, you can only leave a short text comment. Other mapping projects like OpenStreetMap allow users to quickly redraw the lines themselves, though at the cost of increased complexity and a high learning curve. For now, Google promises to resolve each edit within a month.

All of this additional data also adds a new layer of clutter to the maps, though. For now, it is not possible to turn the information about trails and paths on or off, for example. If you are planning a route to drive with your car, you probably won't care much about the bike trails. At the same time, if you are planning a bike trip, it would be nice if you could just highlight all the biking trails in a given area.

Focus on Better Maps Instead of More Satellite Images

The competition between online map providers has mostly been around adding new and higher-resolution satellite images lately. The Bing Maps July update, for example, came in at over 41TB of new satellite imagery and aerial photography. Now, it looks like Google is going back to pushing the envelope by focusing back on the straightforward mapping features that make up the core of every good mapping service.

A substantial portion of the web's creativity can be found in the Flash developer community.

Too much Flash can be very annoying, but offering Google Maps in Flash only makes sense. We're excited to see what developers do with it, and we're far from alone in that excitement.

Greg Sadetsky, CEO of map savvy open source R&D lab Poly9, wrote this morning that "This is great news. There has been a long wait for Google to release an official Flash API for their popular Maps product." ZDNet's Google-watching Garett Rogers appeared to have unearthed the API hours before it was presented at the conference, that's how we knew to start looking around.

Mapping is Hot

The mapping world is exploding right now; from the release of the giant Yahoo! Geo-location database API this week, to the release of control over KML mapping markup by Google last month and the groundswell of developer interest in location-aware applications and frameworks.

Throw some Flash Google Maps into the mix and things are liable to really get interesting. Check out this adorable little Flash Map below.

Currently, as far as we can tell, the only market where Google already offers these ads is Japan, where logos for companies like 7-Eleven and McDonald's appear on the maps. Kit Eaton from Fast Company wonders if the new ads will be contextual and generated based on user input. Judging from the ads that appear on the maps in Japan, these logos will appear on the map, no matter what the user is looking for. At least on the maps in Japan, these logos are very small and don't get in the user's way - though they definitely add more clutter.

Microsoft's Bing Maps already offers a slightly more sophisticated advertising package where certain sponsored listings are highlighted with a business' logo when a user performs a relevant search.

Just yesterday, Google also launched a new layout for the Place Pages on Google Maps that shows details about a business such as opening hours, images, and reviews.