I promised Andrew a comparison of the big three map creation applications by feature and functionality, so here it goes. The story of how lightweight web based map creation applications came to be is interesting in and of itself. I think looking at how the three applications evolved historically will provide a bit of insight.

Before the GeoWeb came into mainstream popularity both Microsoft and Yahoo! had mapping applications. Microsoft offered their browser based Terraserver which hooked up USGS imagery for the map tiles. Microsoft launched Terraserver in June of 1998 – practically prehistoric.

Microsoft had also been active in the mapping space with products like MapPoint (both desktop application and web services). Yahoo! also was an early adopter of mapping applications in conjunction with their local search destination (although I completely failed at finding a date for when they first added maps). Despite the early adoption of web based mapping applications by Yahoo! and Microsoft it was arguably the launch of Google Maps in 2005 that jump started both the GeoWeb and the mash up craze.

Shortly after Google Maps launched, Paul Radamacher hacked the application to allow it to display Craig’s List rental listings on the Google slippy map. Shortly there after Adrien Holovaty followed suit mashing up Chicago crime statistics with Google Maps. Google quickly released an API to allow developers to do the same thing seamlessly and we were off to the races. Microsoft quickly created Virtual Earth and Yahoo! pushed out Yahoo! Maps. Microsoft created compelling innovations with birds eye imagery and Yahoo! launched several popular GeoWeb services like free geocoding and Flash based mapping APIs.

Microsoft Collections

Through all these innovations there was a constant one way flow of content creation – developers could create unique maps and users could view them. Microsoft changed this when they launched Collections May 23, 2006:

Collections. Social networking functionality allows customers to create lists of favorite landmarks and locations, attach personal photos and save them to a Scratchpad. Collections can be saved, recalled later, “permalinked,” and shared with friends and community in e-mail or through their MSN® Spaces blog.

While not well publicized the “Collections” concept fundamentally changed the work flow for creating maps. No longer did you need to be a developer or GIS pro to create a basic map and share it with other people. The Virtual Earth folks even gave users a decent amount of cartographic power and options:

Customized pushpins. A pushpin is essentially a marker indicating points of interest on a map view. A customized pushpin can easily be added with a simple right click, anywhere on a map, which will display a small red dot and a pop-up menu. A pushpin title or note of up to 200 characters can be added that will appear with the pushpin whenever a mouse hovers over it. Pushpins can easily be edited or deleted. When a pushpin is removed, whether customized or standard, the remaining pushpins will be automatically renumbered.

2-D drawings in Collections. Users can add lines and drawings in a variety of colors, shapes and styles to personalize their Collection. They also can draw lines and shade areas that they want to mark on the map, such as for marking a running or bike trail, or neighborhood boundaries).

MyMaps

Despite the potential of the innovation the new functionality did not get much coverage in the press or massive levels of adoption. The TechCrunch article on it was lumped in with other new features from Yahoo! Maps.

Just short of a year later Google launched Google MyMaps on April 4th 2007 to big headlines across the blogs, including MyMaps being the death knell of popular map mashups like Platial, Frappr and Tagzania.

Fundamentally the functionality and features of MyMaps was not remarkably different than Collections, but the buzz around it was at least ten fold. So why was the attention so skewed towards Google for fundamentally the same innovation Microsoft had launched a year earlier? A few guesses:

MapMixer

Yahoo! was not too far behind launching their own map creation application, Yahoo! Mapmixer on September 13th 2007. Mapmixer took a different angle on map creation by allowing users to put static maps on top of the Yahoo! Maps applications. For instance after the Buscan oil spill in the San Francisco Bay last year I made a lot of calls trying to get the raw data on the location of the spills, for GeoCommons, but had no luck.

I did find a PDF with a map of the oil spills so I saved it as a PNG then uploaded it to Yahoo Mapmixer and they took me through three easy steps to georeference the map on Yahoo! Maps. The user experience I thought was the best of the three and there were lots of great social features for me to give a short description of the map and for other users to comment on the map. Although much like Microsoft the application did not generate lots of buzz as with Google MyMaps, and the gallery only features 38 user submitted maps today. Interestingly, in concept, it is quite similar to Microsoft’s MapCruncher, although it is a download and supports a wider variety of raster based formats that must already be georeferenced.

Since the launch of map creation applications by the three big players there have been two noticeable waves of enhancement 1) support for external data and 2) collaboration features. Microsoft put themselves out as being the first to support loading KML, “The October 07 release of Live Maps was the first to support KML viewing and import to Collections”. November 27th 2007 Google added KML, KMZ and GeoRSS support to MyMaps. Google followed this up with social features, like commenting, rating and open collaboration invitations for MyMaps.

Performance Trials

That covers features and functionality from a historic evolution stand point, but how do they perform? We did a very informal, one user, stress test. Create push pins as quickly as possible and see when the map application maxes out or gets sluggish. For Yahoo! Mapmixer this was pretty easy. You can overlay one picture or map onto the application, so you max out at one.

In the process of loading and georeferencing the image you get speedy performance and predictable response times. For MyMaps and and Collections we had a bit more to stress. We’ll start with Collections where we created 200 push pins with good response time then got the following message “You cannot add more than 200 items to a collection. To add more items, create another collection.”

When we went with the same test on MyMaps,we did high rate push pin creation and after about 30 the system got a bit sluggish, and sometimes it would create a listing for a pushpin on left hand pane but not create the push pin on the map. The caveat here is we were doing this high speed, and when we slowed down to a more deliberate pace the system handled it fine.

MyMaps also maxes out at 200 push pins on the map, but instead of providing a warning it generates a pagination for a continuing set of push pins. So when you click on the first page you get a map with the first 200 push pins and when you click on the second page you get the next 200 push pins on a new map in the same browser and tab. Oddly it stops at 820 push pins and starts back over at the number one but you can keeping adding push pins to the map.

What’s Next?

That pretty much wraps it up for a comparison of the big three, how they evolved in a competitive environment, and a very ad hoc test of their limits.

I believe the most interesting part will be where they evolve to next. What is the next set of functionality that will distinguish one from the other? Can Microsoft or Yahoo! introduce the next killer functionality that will catch up to 7 million maps that have been created with MyMaps?

Popularity: 70% [?]

There were two great articles that popped up in the last week or so that I’ve been trying to carve out some time to blog about. The first was an insightful overview of the GeoWeb from The Economist called “The World on Your Desktop“. One of the major points in The Economist article is the convergence of the GeoWeb and GIS, “when the analytical insights and data quality of GIS are combined with the geoweb’s visualisation (ease of use) and networking prowess, startling efficiencies emerge.” I must admit I am biased since the article mentions us as one of the companies blurring the line between GIS and the GeoWeb, although sometimes to GIS professional’s chagrin. The second article was a blog post by Nick Black of OpenStreetMaps. Nick does a great job of better defining neogeography. The conclusion being neogeography is about pragmatic solutions to geographic problems that cut through the tendency of traditional GIS to build “complexity to ensure exclusivity”. My take away from the two articles and several recent conversations; the market is moving towards convergence faster than expected and the democratization of GIS will be here sooner than we think.

In many ways the spreadsheet analogy works well. I use about 20% of the functionality in my spreadsheet program and that 20% of functionality is accessible to me with little or no training. That 20% of functionality is what about 80% of spreadsheet users utilize on a regular basis. This in turns allows a very large population of users to create data in a spreadsheet format and share it with other people. I do not need a four year degree in statistics to use the spreadsheet, although if I did there would be a larger percentage of functionality I could tap into and create more results to share.

In the world of traditional GIS there is no 20% that is open to 80% of users. Either you are a GIS wonk or you are not a GIS wonk, and the number of GIS wonks is quite low because of the training and barriers of entry to becoming one. The end result is a complex technology that ensures an exclusive user base. Why can’t or why is there not a GIS technology that is ubiquitous as spreadsheets. Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth have surely demonstrated the public’s appetite for an “easy to use” technology. Can the leap be made which create “easy to use” web based technologies that bring the relevant 20% of GIS analytic/exploration functionality to the 80% of the market hungry for it?

Popularity: 12% [?]

An interesting press release floated across GISuser yesterday on ESRI striking a strategic partnership with Jane’s to make their data available through ESRI tools. What I found intriguing was a service like Jane’s, which targets a non-technical audience, using ESRI, which has a largely technical user base, as channel to disseminate their data. The question it raises is ESRI working on something new to seriously expand their user base beyond GIS professionals, or is there enough demand by the US government (and others) for Jane’s data to be available to its GIS users to drive the deal.

The press release gives a few clues:

“For Jane’s electronic data, subscribers to its Web and desktop services can fuse and share the geospatial information in a common operating picture via ESRI’s software….For users new to the power of GIS, this easy-to-use capability will add considerable value to Jane’s products.”

So, is this a new “easy to use capability” or are they referring to ArcGIS 9.2 and ArcIMS?

Looking at the quote from Jane’s side is sounds as if the target is to make the data available to GIS professionals, “this partnership opens up a wealth of opportunity for Jane’s customers to view information in a GIS environment.” I think this brings up the compelling question of when does GIS include everyone, or when does web mapping (aka Google, Microsoft) encompass GIS. The line is definitely getting more blurry every day.

Popularity: 7% [?]