YouTube and More now Inside Google Maps
For those looking for a Google announcement that’s actually usable right now, good news, Google Maps has added some new location markers showing videos from YouTube, books from Google Book Search, and geo-tagged photos from Panoramio.
When you search for something in Google Maps, if there are relevant photos, videos or books in that area you’ll see blue place markers which will open the content in a typical Google Maps pop-up with a preview, like the example of Big Ben above.
In the case of YouTube videos the actually movie is embedded so you can watch it without leaving the map. Book results will show all the relevant publishing information along with the cover image and a short excerpt if it’s available.
Of course this is in addition to the community features that Google has rolled out lately. To see that content just click on the “see community maps” link.
While these are nice new additions for maps, we’re still wondering when Google services are going to start embracing outside data. Panoramio photos are nice, but where’s the Flickr images? Where’s the Vimeo videos or Goodreads books? So long as Google keeps limiting the external data in Maps to exclusively Google services, users like us end up with a subpar portrait of the web and eventually that’s going to come back the haunt Google.
We’re looking forward to the day we can get our Flickr images in Google Maps and our Google Book Search results in Yahoo Maps, but until then this will have to do.
[via Google Blogoscoped]
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