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Aug 21
2007

Brady Forrest

Brady Forrest

Google Releases YouTube-Style Embedded Maps


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As rumored last week, Google Maps has released a feature that lets you easily embed a Google Map on any web page (see above, I hope) that would normally accept YouTube Videos or an iframe. Be prepared to see maps on even more pages as they are now very accessible.

google map dialog embed box

It's very simple to use. Create a map with directions or pictures. Click "Link to this page" in the top right corner and copy the HTML in the second block (like in the image to the left). Paste into the HTML of another webpage. They also have a customize option available that lets you change the dimensions. Google Maps Mania has a more complete walk-through of the process.

It is available in the following countries US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. It is available in the following languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Basque, Galician, Welsh, Faroese and Chinese (TW).

The feature is very cool, but not without its limitations. The first map I attempted to embed included a route to Burning Man and the Panoramio Mapplet. Other attempts that didn't work include a map of traffic in the Seattle area and several other mapplet -routing combinations. I was able to get a MyMap-Mapplet combination working though. I didn't see anywhere on the site that explains what is and isn't embeddable content. The embed HTML box is just greyed out and there is text stating that "This map cannot be embedded" with a link to the top-level Google Maps support page.

I like that fact that they are marketing this as YouTube-Style maps. Almost anyone on the the net today will understand exactly what that means and how to use embed a map. As I mentioned last week, Google Maps already dominates on third-party websites; this will increase that margin substantially.

Update: Ecto, my blogging client, appears to have stripped out the iframe when I made my original post. I have added the embed map back to the post.



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18 Comments

Giridhar said:

Very interesting article, i missed to write on my blog!

elly parker said:

Ummm, it's available in Ireland as well...

Rocky said:

This will be huge for small businesses that want to embed mapping into their locations page.

Rik said:

All this embedding stuff into web pages is all well and good, but we have to be careful we don't end up ripping a hole in the fabric of space-time...

http://www.rikabel.com/2007/08/21/where-i-am-on-my-holidays/

domagoj said:

LOL for the last comment... maps are cool but this is no biggie..

I once read a sarcastatistic that stated 99.999995% of all Mashups make use of Google Maps.

And let's be fair, the guy wasn't that far wrong!

It's amazing how much play time we're still getting from Google Maps...

Jon said:

Google maps is all very well and good, but what about... HUMAN RIGHTS??? Yeah, you know they be spying on us.

Lol

James said:

Hasn't Microsoft's Live Earth been doing this for quite a while now?

James said:

Haven't you been able to do this for quite a while thanks to Microsoft's Virtual Earth?

Artist said:

I have been waiting for this, so many pages will end up looking nicer with a good visual map inserted. Thanks for the info on how to use it. We have been embedding maps for years and I have always wished they would look better.

Nat said:

> you know they be spying on us.

Indeed! As soon as you embed some thingie (Google: Maps, Analytics...) into a published web page, you let Google run code upon each and every visitor access, letting Google track visitors. This may prove vital for them because their milkcow (AdSense) is much more efficient when they know what a given visitor likes.

@Nat: I find your comment thought-provoking, but not for the reason you list.

In the bad old days, any moves that Microsoft would make would be seen solely from the lens of "Microsoft is profiteering."

But now when Google releases new technology, not much discussion goes into this company. Sure they do not want to "be evil." But, one still has to try to think a little bit about where the company is going with all this.

Nat said:

Ajeet: two main reasons may explain this.

Established cases

As far as I know suspicion upon Microsoft spawned after some weird behavior of them was exposed by analysts, sometimes more-or-less discreetly helped by competitors. Is there any similar 'case' making a dent in Google's reputation?

Identification - authentication

Moreover some maybe think that such a tracking is not dangerous as long as collected data are not tied to identities (Microsoft customers were identified through software registration / Passport / ...).

One can easily show that, in most cases, discovering it is possible, probably without human analysis... thanks to appropriate data and software. As a sidenote: those data and softwares may be a major piece in the Web 2.0 'behind-the-curtains' toolchest.

Tim said:

I think Google maps is all very good and nice feature, but that HUMAN RIGHTS are more interesting.
With this feature you can also make maps for every action you want. See like this http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/homicidemap/

Sorry for my bad english.
Greets from germany

Yuki said:

Hi.

I have created a tool that generates an embed tag for google map, and want people to try it.

You can create a tag just by clicking on the map. Please give it a try. You can start from this URL (show you how to use):

http://ongmap.com/blog/?p=117

or just go directly to the site (http://ongmap.com)

Sylvia H said:

Yeah Jon, Big Brother is Watching You?:-)

Domagoj said:

My friends, if you don't do anything illegal I don't know why wouldn't you let someone spy on you. It would make you safer and criminals scared. You just have to invest some trust in the agency that does the spying :)
And regarding Google spying. It does make them more money by better targeting adds, but it also gives you adds to stuff you like :) I would rather look at adds about computers and IT technology than fckn V!AG|R/\.... :) greetz...

J.O. Urban said:

This will be an excellent way to increase the use of google maps and make it a standard in the industry. I've long been a fan of yahoo maps but more and more now the flexibility that google maps offers is starting to charm me over. Specially the ability to search for intersections or partial addresses where previously on yahoo and mapquest you were required to know the full address of a location.

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