google maps, page-2

From

nearmap.com CEO 365

January 28, 2011 Google Real Estate

I'll admit I was taken by surprise over the last day or so by the announcement from Google that they were getting out of the Real Estate listings business. In a posting on Google Australia's blog, Brian McClendon, VP of Google Earth and Maps said the company was 'retiring' the service from next month. He said " In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we've decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.'

I did a quick bit of ahem Googling for some comments as there are likely several reasons for this decision - lack of access to quality listings perhaps, (in Australia) the dominant market position of the two big players RealEstate and Domain and the slightly complicated some would say murky dynamic of agents fees, ads and commissions for listings. I don't know but I do know this is a surprise to me and from the outset this service seemed to play to Google's sweet spot of of maps, data layers and location specific content so much so that back in '09 many people predicted the listings portals would take a big hit. It didn't materialise and further details will no doubt appear over the next few days / weeks.

One comment did catch my eye on Mumbrella a chap called Simon Baker who was the former CEO of RealEstate.com.au laid out some interesting points about Google's failure. You can agree or disagree that's not my interest what caught my eye was his observation 'the service was not intuitive to use people like to search by lists rather than by map'. Really. I am not so sure. It seems to me that the listings were not seamlessly integrated into the map as you had to select the layer plus you had the challenge of invariably looking at dated imagery. I know myself how my web browsing habits of changed and I am increasingly using a map e.g. Google Places on my mobile to search and find listings.

I think this is an opportunity for nearmap.com - we have the unique attributes of high resolution and change over time enabling users to get in close and see much more detail and most importantly the content is current. I can't help feel this would make using an intuitive map for searching for Real Estate much more appealing and effective than a list.

Link @

http://nearmapceo.posterous.com/