Perspectives

Remember a little while ago, Google did India ? Now, it adds australia to it’s kitty. And this time, it is not just the map, but search (Geocoding) and driving directions as well. Australian maps are sweetly inter operable, that is, you can get to it from the .au site or the .com site. The header div in the Australian site is atrociously large (atleast on firefox) and hence the map div is quite small.

I am assuming the .au site is tolerable down under, because from here, it is quite slow. Another thought is, now that they are slowly making many corners of the world map-able under the same destination, shouldnt the frontpage be different for each of us? That is, if my IP is from India, Shouldnt I be seeing the India front map with sample queries for Indian addresses ?

Also, If maps.google.com.au is beta, and if the same map data is available via maps.google.com, how is that not beta ? Incidentally, the route to the Google’s sydney headquarters is itself turning up incorrectly.

By the way, here is an australian sample query for driving directions “2000 to bondi beach”. What kind of a place is 2000 ? Does it exist on the X/Y Plane? Or we are travelling back in time from the year 2000? I wonder!

But that apart, I noticed they are strangely blending something like the web results with the local search results. For instance, every second result for a query such as “undefined” is getting back stuff from I dunno where. Not from web search. Not even from Groups search. Do you have any idea ?

But once again, beautiful colors and gradients and the icons seem to merge well. The experience between US and AU maps is also seamless. Talking of seam, Check out the wonderful MCG(Melbourne cricket Ground) here

Related posts:

1. Dont be asshole!
2. Google does India
3. Google goes Local in India
4. Yahoo India Maps, Now with Driving directions
5. Google does India, On the mobile