When we first entered the exciting world of geography, we brought with us an idea that there could be more to online maps than, well, maps. We hoped to build a Web site not limited to providing maps and driving directions, but one that could serve as a platform for all manners of location-based information and services. Or to put it in Google terms: a starting point for organizing the world’s information geographically.
For this and other reasons we were thrilled to see “hackers” have a go at Google Maps almost immediately after we launched the site back in early February. Literally within days, their blogs described the inner workings of our maps more accurately than our own design documents did, and soon the most amazing “hacks” started to appear: Philip Lindsay’s Google Maps “standalone” mode, Paul Rademacher’s Housing Maps, and Chris Smoak’s Busmonster, to mention a few.
It was an exciting day for our small team when we learned that premier publishing house O’Reilly was considering writing an entire book about Google Maps Hacks, and we were pleased to be able to announce our official maps API program at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference in June. It is both humbling and flattering to witness the astounding creativity surrounding our maps as chronicled in this wonderful book—already a few short months after Where 2.0, thousands of programmers from around the world feature Google Maps in their increasingly impressive and successful creations.
Mapping and geography is a wonderful field, and clearly the Web has made it possible to explore and advance the millennia-old field in new and exciting ways. There’s so much more to do, and this marvelous book will serve as a great resource for mapping enthusiasts. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we did!
—Jens Rasmussen and Lars Rasmussen
Google Maps team
Get Google Maps Hacks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
