Digital Earth Blog

I’ve been quick to give MapQuest credit for effort, as they’re really trying to catch up the big boys now that their lead is quickly shrinking.

Yesterday they introduced live traffic. It looks very similar to the traffic info on Google Maps, but with more detailed information. The screenshots look pretty nice:

Here’s the problem — it didn’t work right away. I refreshed and reloaded and zoomed around for a while before I could make the “Traffic” checkbox appear. I later found another page on their site that gives more information about this feature. I thought I might find the answer there, but instead I found this:

Fortunately, they mark the traffic-enabled cities with a traffic light, in a virtually identical manner as Google. A quick glance seems to show that they have more cities than Google, but not by a wide margin.

The real test, of course, is who gives better data? Here is a side-by-side shot of Atlanta using Google Maps and MapQuest:

Assuming their data is accurate, the clear winner appears to be MapQuest. Google has much of the highway in gray (”no data”), while MapQuest is showing data for everything. In addition, MapQuest has the clickable icons so you know exactly what the problem is.

For me, however, 95% of my Google Maps traffic usage is from my cell phone while I’m on the road — Google Maps Mobile is very useful. As far as I know, MapQuest has nothing to compare to that. With that in mind, Google Maps will still be the winner by default for when I’m on the road, but I might give MapQuest a try next time I check traffic info from the house.

Edit 10:08pm, 3/18/08 - MapQuest does have a mobile product to compare to Google Maps Mobile, and it’s called MapQuest Navigator.  It appears to be a little better than GMM, but it costs $50/year and works on a rather small selection of phones.

It’ll be a hard road (if not impossible) for MapQuest to try to catch up to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the maps race, but they’re doing their best.

I guess I should say what I mean by “catch up”.  In terms of usage, they still have a remarkable lead.  In January they still had just over 50% of US visits, with Google in second place at 22%.  Given how crappy their system has been when compared to the others, those are some staggering numbers.  Branding goes a long way…

Despite the great numbers, Google is quickly gaining ground.  MapQuest knows they have to do something or they’ll be dead before too long.  As part of that, they’ve just released “MapQuest Platform“.  It sounds pretty slick:

• Support for a wide variety of programming languages including Java, C++, .NET, JavaScript, Adobe ActionScript.
• Aerial/hybrid views
• Smart rollovers, that move and resize as necessary based on the content in the window.
• Smooth zoom
• Flickable maps that continue to pan, similar to Google Earth
• Shape ovelays
• Geocoding
• A variety of other things

All in all, it’s a very nice upgrade.  However, it still falls far short of the power of any other other three platforms.  As a developer, I have absolutely no interest in using them for building a mashup, as Google already handles it far better and I’m already more familiar with their tools.

That being said, MapQuest has to do something, and this is certainly a move in the right direction.