But there's another frontier of mobile mapping that matters, and the exploration has just begun. Indoor mapping of big buildings - like airports, convention centers, museums and stores - is the El Dorado of mobile location. Google has begun its expedition inside buildings, and businesses can sign up and offer their floor plans. But there's another option: Use a platform like Meridian and build your own inside map. Which is better for business?

Google launched interior maps in November. It's currently only available on Google Maps for Android. When it launched, it came with a bunch of partners, and it offered any business owner the ability to submit a floor plan for inclusion. After that, the business owner doesn't have to do a thing except submit updated plans if things change. Google handles the rest.

Business owners have enough to think about, so letting a service provider handle all this mapping stuff could be a convenient choice. Google has a vested interest in presenting the most attractive local business listings it can. But are they always the most accurate? In October, Google decided to take responsibility for updating business listings into its own hands, asking owners about changes only after the fact.

If you need fine-grained control over how your business appears online, you might want a more custom solution.

Meridian: Roll Your Own Map

When a location releases an app built with Meridian, it's a grand affair. It announces partners one at a time, such as the launch of the Oregon Convention Center app yesterday. Unlike Google, Meridian is in start-up mode, but it raised $1 million last year on the premise that the best location-based business apps are built by the businesses themselves.

Meridian has offered consumers interior mapping longer than Google has, but only for a few participating locations. That's not a shortcoming, though; Meridian is a platform. For consumers, it's an app that lets them navigate inside favorite museums, stadiums and stores (currently mostly in Meridian's hometown of Portland, Ore.). But for businesses, it's a way to build and control a 3D interior map of their own location and offer a custom-branded app for it.

It has its own Web-based editing tools, so owners can move around contents of the map like store displays or museum exhibits. You can include audio tours or featured products that display prominently for the user. It will even push pertinent information to the customer's device.

How Should Businesses Handle Maps?

If you own or work for a business with a building you want mapped for smartphones, think about priorities. Is it better for you to ship off location data to a service provider who will handle it for you, or would you rather have constant control over the experience? Do you just need to be on the map, or would you like to build the app?

Whichever option makes the most sense for you, it's exciting to have such choices. The power of the mobile Web to enhance the world for users and raise the profile of local businesses is only just starting to kick in.

Which location-based services do you use, whether for work or for fun?

Alerts from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service and the US Geological Survey (USGS) are included in the service. In normal Google Maps searches, alerts are shown based on their severity, the user's location and the search query.

Last August, Google Maps added a weather layer that pulls in Weather.com readings and forecasts to help users plan. Now, if the weather is bad enough, Google Maps users will also get detailed warnings about its severity. Search queries will also highlight alerts; if your Maps search contains "flood," relevant flood warnings will be displayed in your results.

This is the second announcement of new emergency uses for Google Maps this month. Google has partnered with the World Bank to make crowd-sourced Google Map Maker data available to first responders in disaster scenarios. In countries where the official Google Maps data does not have sufficient detail, local information submitted by volunteers through Google Map Maker can still be vital in emergencies. The World Bank can now connect Google to governments and NGOs responding to crises, so they can access these more detailed, unofficial maps.

Trail profiles give time and distance measurements, weather forecasts and routes overlaid on topographic maps. AllTrails initially used Google Maps data but found it to be too inaccurate for safe planning of wilderness trips. After Google began to charge for access to the Google Maps SDK, AllTrails began to explore other partnerships. Today's announcement with National Geographic is the beginning of an integration that will move AllTrails away from Google.

After Google announced they would charge for developer access to Maps, AllTrails founder/CEO Russell Cook says that "a handful of projects were kicked off to improve the open source alternatives but there wasn't nearly as much activity as I expected."

After Google revealed the pricing in Q4 of 2011, Cook says "things kicked into high gear." The pricing was "significantly higher than I think anyone anticipated," Cook says. "Most publishers are lucky to consistently monetize their site traffic at $1 CPM, let alone be able to build profitable business models while paying Google $4 CPM for mapping."

"Deep down I think the developer community knew that at some point the Google APIs they were using would stop being free," Cook says, "but I don't think they ever expected the price gouging. My personal opinion is that Google has every right to charge for the services they are providing but their recent actions have been very short sighted."

Even before Google announced it would charge for access, AllTrails was reevaluating its mapping tools. "We found Google Maps to at times be wildly inaccurate," Cook says, "which is something our audience can't afford when out in the wilderness." By licensing mapping content from National Geographic, AllTrails has begun to move away from Google.

National Geographic's TOPO! allows AllTrails to overlay detailed topographic maps of terrain. Currently, AllTrails still uses Google Maps for its core services, but Cook looks forward to "some of the very exciting projects the Bing team will be releasing this year."

AllTrails is available on the Web at alltrails.com. Its smartphone app is also available on the iTunes App Store and Android Market.

"Play your world, like never before," is the promotion's slogan. It ends with a link to Google's new Start Here page for Google Maps, which offers a detailed walkthrough of the service. This gives Google a chance to show off all the new features of Maps, such as interior mapping and crowd-sourced map-making. If Facebook's history is any indication, one surefire way to drive social network eyeballs to something is to turn it into a game.

Google's first integration of Maps into Google+ came last September with the sharing of live maps and directions on G+. The game is more of an obvious promotional effort. The intersection of mobile, social and location services is Google's next big thing, and dedicated competitors like Foursquare are iterating quickly.

As an ad company, Google wants to control the end-to-end search for local places and businesses. That's why it's pushing its Google Places recommendations into Maps despite formidable, focused competitors in the space like Foursquare and Yelp. The next frontier is mapping inside locations, which Bing has worked on, as well as other single-minded start-ups.

The acquisition of Zagat gave Google a wealth of premium content to complement user-generated Google Places reviews. Google+ and personalized search are becoming Google's key signals for generating recommendations to users, but it won't hold a candle to Foursquare's recommendation power until it's widely adopted. Zagat reviews will give Google Places a bit of a boost, and they're prominently displayed in this game-based promotion.

Do you play games on your social networks?

Google has also partnered with some Las Vegas-area Best Buy stores, so it can guide gadget-addled convention-goers straight to the cash register. Today's update also releases the floor plans of some of the first locations submitted to Google.

There's a mobile arms race heating up here. Apple's Siri intelligent search assistant on the iPhone 4S skips Google and goes to Yelp when you search for a local place or business. Apple has also been snapping up 3D mapping technology. Meanwhile, Bing Maps has provided inside mapping since August of last year.

Mobile mapping inside buildings is an important trend, but Google has an advantage of scale. As the map provider for the biggest smartphone platform and the iPhone (for now), the majority of smartphone users are comfortable with Google Maps.

To understand the value of this strategy, look no further than Google's partnerships with Las Vegas-area Best Buy stores during CES. Google has a piece of every step of the sales process except the cash itself, and it wants in on that, too.

That peer review element is key to Google Maps' new direction. In September, Google rearranged the Map Maker review process, deputizing regional expert reviewers to expand its capacity to handle crowd-sourced edits. Today's new tools take that a step further, allowing anyone to review proposed edits before they're incorporated into the live map.

Google Map Maker has been around since 2008, but it had limited scope for a while, and all edits were reviewed by staff. It only came to the U.S. this April. As Google Maps spreads and gets more detailed around the world, the influx of content has strained its capacity. It took two months for the Google team to incorporate South Sudan's independence, for example.

But by opening the door wider to crowd-sourced content, Google was able to quickly add more detailed maps of a range of important countries this year, all thanks to volunteer Map Maker editors.

The Google Maps team runs a pretty tight ship; it can usually handle edits faster than you might think. Improving the quality of community edits will only speed up the process. Google Maps needs more capacity, too. With its plans to move inside buildings, Google Maps will have lots of little details to deal with.

This is a key move for Google's mobile business, which up until now could only take you to the front door of the place for which you were searching. Google Maps on the desktop recently got 3D photo tours of small locations, an extension of Street View, but this is a bigger step. When Google Maps goes inside, Google can take you all the way from searching for something to holding it in your hand, advertising and data-gathering all the way.

This is currently only available on the native Android version of Google Maps, but that's where it makes the most sense. At your desk, a photo tour is all you need. This location-based technology is a mobile innovation for once you're actually there. Google Maps is now an end-to-end service, and that means Google has your eyeballs every step of the way.

Maps & Mobile Platforms

Location services are the heart of any mobile platform, and mapping is the most fundamental interface for them. Naturally, Android users (with the latest versions of everything) will get this powerful new service straight from Google. What about other mobile platforms?

The iPhone uses Google for mapping, too, at least for now. Based on the way Apple and Google are butting heads on mobile and location tools, that partnership can't be long for this world. When iPhone 4S users ask Siri about local businesses, she skips Google and goes to Yelp, even though Google is likely to be the place a user would go first if given the choice. Apple is clearly trying to squeeze Google out of this picture. It recently bought a 3D mapping company of its own. This stand-off is why Google Maps and Siri were head to head in our Top 10 Consumer Web Products of 2011.

Interestingly, Bing Maps got interior mapping on its mobile Web version this August, but it didn't make much of a splash.

Mapping The Inside World

Interiors are the last frontier of location services, and Google is looking to annex it. It's the next big thing for Google's business.

This is interesting news for startups working on this problem. Meridian, a Portland, Ore.-based company, just took $1 million in funding to make interior mapping into a platform. It provides its partner businesses with an interface to turn a 3D map of their building into an interactive, standalone application. That's a competing vision for how mapping the inside world should work.

How will Apple's mobile location interface be different? What will Bing Maps do? It's go-time for location services right now, and Google has a very strong hand.

Read more about Google Maps 6.0 for Android on the Google LatLong blog.

How do you use your mobile devices to navigate the inside world?

Applications can use drawings for selecting regions of the map to search or highlight, as well as for annotations. This simple interface offers a surprising range of features for developers building applications upon Google Maps.

There's a working demo embedded on the Google Geo Developers Blog. Try it out; it's easy to use, but it's surprisingly flexible. While it's easy to make stupid doodles like I did, the interface is quite precise, so this new library can definitely be used carefully to mark up or highlight maps. Developers could build this into their applications for fun or work purposes.

What uses could you see for the new Google Maps drawing library?

These new features push forward Google's efforts to be a one-stop-shop for mobile, location-based searches. From finding the restaurant to walking in the door, Google is building applications to compel smartphone users to use Google and only Google to find, shop and eat at local businesses.

In July, Google Places made its move and started pushing Yelp around on Google search result pages for restaurants and businesses, which feed into Yelp's core business. In September, the CEO of Yelp testified before the Senate that Google's practices around local businesses are anti-competitive.

Chairman Eric Schmidt replied that Google has plenty of competition, including from Yelp, thanks to its partnership with Apple. Siri, the new AI voice assistant on the iPhone 4S, bypasses Google for searches for local businesses, going straight to Yelp results. Apple is also buying companies who compete with other aspects of Google's local search business, including 3D mapping companies.

In the meantime, Google has acquired Zagat, publisher of restaurant reviews, in order to shore up the quality of its local business content. It has also seized control of the content of local business listings to ensure the quality of its search results.

What Web services do you use to find stuff to do in your area?

An era has ended for the first API that really made mashups mainstream, most famously via housingmaps.com, a mashup of Craigslist rental search results and Google Maps. Unlimited access may no longer be available for free, but some observers say it's a good move for the developer ecosystem. "For some developers this can clearly be an issue but overall it's healthy for the ecosystem," John Musser of API watch-dog site Programmable Web told us tonight. "Services need to be sustainable with business models that work for both sides."

The free vs commercial nature of Google APIs and the Maps API in particular have always been a little unclear.

"Given the value these APIs give and the cost of running them," says independent Australian developer Daniel Treadwell in words echoed by many people, "I think charging for it isn't a problem at all. The last thing anyone wants is for it to be retired like some others have been."

This Spring, there was a massacre of free Google APIs that got slated for shut down so the company could focus on other priorities. Weeks later, Google changed its mind about its Translate API in particular, announcing it would develop a paid version that developers dependent on it could rely on.

It's extremely unlikely that the Maps API would ever disappear altogether, but even if it did there are already viable alternatives including Open Street Map and MapQuest. Other up-and-coming options include DevelopmentSeed and TileMill.

So far, though, many developers appear satisfied with the way Google is handling this transition tonight. (Except some dissenters on my Google Plus thread, which is great to see. Keep it up, dissenters!) That's good for the future of location-based application development and innovation. Google Maps is a living, breathing, changing, incredibly valuable resource. If you wrote an app that has got enough traction that you're cranking on that API past a certain limit, paying something for it certainly seems fair.

Paul Rademacher, the creator of HousingMaps.com, had this to say in response to the announcement:

My concern would be that individual and small-team developers (who have fueled the geo explosion) not be scared away by this change. 25,000 maps per day is actually quite high, and should cover the long tail of API sites. It takes a lot of press or very healthy sustained traffic to reach that number. One main question developers will have is "what happens if my site suddenly hits the front page of X and gets huge traffic?" That should be ok according to the Maps API FAQ, so long as it's a short-term spike. I expect the vast majority of sites won't be affected at all by the new usage limit, some very small number of very large sites will be affected, and for those in between: talk to Google API Premier team and figure something out. To the small geo developers: please keep coding!!

Turns out that's a big "if," though. The requirements are pretty stiff. "Some low-end integrated GPUs" aren't supported, and apparently that of the latest MacBook Air is too "low-end." Even a 2-year-old MacBook Pro gets a warning message that MapsGL will "run slowly." You also have use Chrome (of course) or the latest Firefox 8+ Beta; Safari or ... the other ones ... won't cut it. MapsGL sure looks cool, though!

It's new technology, so Google is brave for pushing things forward, and anybody with a computer that isn't designed to scrimp on performance (like mine) should be able to get results. MapsGL provides sweeping, panning 3D views that let you rotate your satellite maps and watch the shadows change. When you want to go to Street View, drag the little man down, and your view will swoop down in three dimensions and put you on the street. Accordingly, Street View is faster and more responsive now, too.

Unfortunately, for some of us on brand new "low-end" computers, MapsGL is more likely to do this:

The Future of Maps

No hard feelings, though. The LatLong team has shipped a slew of impressive features recently. You can now fly along your directions in Google Maps using Google Earth views inside the browser, and that one will work for just about anybody. Maps also got a weather layer, which is handy for planning trips and outings.

Google Maps is also expanding its international reach. They've stepped up the importance of Google Map Maker for editing, recently graduating a big class of new crowd-sourced country maps to the live Google map.

Does MapsGL work on your system? Try it out and let us know how it goes!

Today's announcement incorporates community contributions from a bunch of new countries, territories, and even an entire continents into the live Google map. The graduates are: Afghanistan, Antarctica, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Honduras, Iraq, Norfolk Island, Saint Pierre & Miquelon and Saudi Arabia.

Google has strained under the weight of mapping the entire wold. After launching Map Maker to crowdsource the effort in 2008, it has steadily increased the importance of community contributions. In April, Google opened Map Maker in the U.S., a tacit admission that it can't map all the locations and businesses itself, even in the world's most wired places.

In September, the Google LatLong team even shifted some of the Map Maker approval process onto Regional Expert Reviewers from the community, rather than having staff moderate all changes.

The system has shown signs of strain. It took the Google Maps team two months to recognize South Sudan's independence, despite a clamoring community. But Google has pressed forward with its effort to expand the global importance of Maps. In August, 40 new countries received localized top-level domains for Google Maps.

As curating Maps becomes a worldwide effort, crowd contributions from Map Maker will only become more important. Today's large crop of graduates is a recognition of great work by a community of volunteers around the world.

Congratulations to the graduates!

For more before-after photos and videos, check out the Google LatLong Blog.

It's all existing Google technology, putting a browser view of Google Earth inside the Maps window, but it's a new integration. It's not the most useful feature, but it is a new and immersive way to plan a trip.

Google Maps is still on a roll with bold new features. In August, the 2D map view got a weather layer, which is another useful tool for trip planning. Recent accessibility improvements include voice search and new international domains. Maps also got more social with the introduction of g.co shortlinks and built-in +snippet sharing of Maps on Google Plus.

What are your favorite things to do with Google Earth? Share them in the comments.

As we reported this summer, most of the major Web mapping services have lagged on this update. Google is the first to make the change.

A Long Time Coming

While Google fixed the name of Martyr's Square in Tripoli nearly overnight this August after Libyan rebels recaptured it, it took Google over two months to recognize South Sudan's independence. Better late than never, though. And admittedly, it's much harder to draw a national border than to change the name of a city square.

Interestingly, Bing was the first service to respond to our inquiries about South Sudan this summer, but its map has not yet changed. "Our next imagery update is slated to happen in the coming months," a Microsoft spokesperson told us. "However, we are currently working on a solution to ensure users are able to locate South Sudan on Bing Maps in the interim. This temporary fix will roll out [in September]."

Google's response was much more vague, saying Google is "committed to providing our users with the richest, most up-to-date maps possible, and as part of that effort we continuously explore ways to integrate new information into Google Maps." The Google spokesperson had no specific comments about Sudan. Nevertheless, Google was the first map service to recognize South Sudan.

Yahoo has still not responded with comment.

Today's announcement praises community mapping efforts in South Sudan as drivers of the change. Earlier this week, Google expanded moderator powers for community editors of Google Maps, shifting some of the editorial burden onto the public.

If you were responsible for Google Maps, how would you handle the challenge of keeping the whole world's map up to date? Let's brainstorm in the comments.

Last month, Google rolled out +snippets to help users and publishers share outside Web pages to Google Plus using the +1 button. But +snippets have also become the primary way other Google services are integrated into Plus. Maps now joins Google's Books, Offers and product searches as the major Google services with +snippet integration.

If you're planning a trip with friends, you can share maps with saved directions as a +snippet. You can also share individual places or location search results. The +snippet displays a thumbnail of the map, a title and a description, and it allows the user to add a comment and share with circles or individuals just like a normal Plus post.

Last month, Google added its internal g.co URL shortener as a feature of Google Maps, making it easier to share maps with anyone on or off Google Plus. Any Google Map can now be shared with a tiny shortlink from g.co, which always indicates a link to a Google.com property.

Have you shared stuff to Google Plus using +snippets?