Friday, February 18, 2005

Sold on Google

Well, Google's done it again! I'm already a huge fan of their search engine, scholarly search, news alerts, email service, and other innovations.

Add Google maps to that now.

I've always been loyal to Mapquest, but I tried out Google maps for the first time today and I'm never going back. Here's why:
- If you type in the city a little wrong, Google searches for what you might have meant. I've gotten really annoyed lately that Mapquest will reject any search if you don't have it exactly right (S. for "South" and so on)
- zooming in on Mapquest maps takes way too long, so I usually don't do it. With Google's service, it's as easy as a scroll bar and immediately resizes the map without the wait!
- I thought this was slick: When I printed out my directions, the map printed on one page, and the directions printed on a second page. There was no extra stuff usually associated with printing from internet sites. Cool!

Can Google ever go wrong? Is it too late to put my retirement in Google stock :-)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I had the same experience with Google Maps. I had never complained about Mapquest, but I'll never go back. Google's excellence is also evident in Blogger (which you are using now) and in Picasa (or better yet, Picasa 2). I'm not sure they can go wrong - unless they ever buy into the corporate culture.