Yes, that means anyone with an Android device can now use this awesome new feature. This even includes users with the original Android phone, the G1. But apparently not all of the features found in Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 will work in the 1.6 version. The one example Google gives is that you can’t use the “navigate to” voice command.

This new version of Maps Navigation also includes a new feature included called “Layers” which allows you to put various information such as Wikipedia articles on top of your map as an overaly.

The update is available in the Android Market today, obviously for free. Sadly, the service is still U.S.-only, and Google warns that it’s still in beta, something which we’ve come to ignore the meaning of thanks to Google’s own Gmail.

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The rapid development of  interesting web services can be attributed to the ability of each successive builder to create a layer upon what others have built.  The existence of APIs and callable web services means that each builder can add value on top.  When you combine this with crowd-sourcing, you effectively pour lighter fluid (in a good way) on this layering process.  The only remaining element required is a taxonomy to insure that the crowd-sourcing creates content that is structured enough to make sense despite coming from many hands.

PublicEarth, a Polaris portfolio company that is launching today, takes the power of API layering, crowd-sourcing, and taxonomy and focuses it on maps. PublicEarth describes itself as a wiki of places, specializing in collecting all those “long tail” places that most other databases tend to overlook.

Maps is an area where I think there has been relative underdevelopment relative to importance, especially in light of all the emerging mobile, social, local platforms.  Everyone I talk to working in this space needs more local data and detail to power their services, as well as, an open crowd-approach to keeping it up to date and granular as possible.

PublicEarth pulls in Google maps, and then applies a customized categorization and set of data fields to each entry.  For example, I went to Collegiate School in Manhattan for high school.  Rather than just having a one size fits all entry structure that allows for simply “reviews,” PublicEarth applies the fields: colors, grade levels, mascot, and size.

Similarly, for Dog Parks, the site lists whether or not there are benches, pick up bags, and areas for small dogs.  Multiply this type of field customization by the seemingly unending quantity of place categories provided by PublicEarth and you have a “wiki for the world.” Notice, also, how on the right side of each place entry is a running log of the changes made by editor users.  The site is open and democratic; everything is open for editing and customization by users.

And then these highly customized places can be grouped into sets that you can share across the web.  For example, here’s a widget featuring elementary, primary, and extracurricular schools in New York that friends and family I know have attended or taught at.  Public Earth is so detailed in its taxonomy that it even has a Culinary School category.

And that use of APIs and layering goes both ways.  Public Earth has a detailed API that can be used to both pull content from and push content into the layer.  I think being able to push content into Public Earth is of particular importance.  There are many stakeholders that want to be able to contribute local map information in individual and bulk fashions to a central wiki-like repository.

Public Earth has already taken feeds from dozens of providers, like CitySearch, Sam’s Club, and SpaFinder, and plans to incorporate many more. So if you want to update information for individual locations, natural attractions, schools, or businesses use the front-end.  And if you have a bulk feed of locations you service in some fashion, you can become a content partner to PublicEarth, or just push them through the API.

If you are interested in using the API during this beta period, email the team, email me, or leave a comment on this post and we’ll be sure to get you one.  Finally, my big congrats to the PublicEarth team.   I think PublicEarth is an important site, and as Mike Hirshland put it “The notion of high value discovery layers over web utilities is a theme in the Polaris portfolio.”  What Brizzly is for Twitter, PublicEarth is for Google Maps.  You can find my profile and contribution on PublicEarth here.

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Today is Droid day, and for the most part Google is taking a backseat and letting their partners get most of the attention. But Droid is the first Android phone to run Android 2.0, and Google Maps Navigation is clearly the early trophy app for those devices.

Google Maps already has 50 million active users across various mobile phones, says Google. But what users have today isn’t even close to the new Navigation product.

First off, it’s connected, which puts it ahead of all but a tiny percentage of in-car navigation systems which have no Internet connectivity (Dash is a notable exception).

The application is also completely free. So all those paid navigation apps (Navigon, TomTom, CoPilot, MapQuest, GoKivo and Sygic Mobile) are at an immediate disadvantage.

But even if Google charged for this app, it would still win hands down. The features include easy search (no need for address), voice search, traffic information (from data sources and crowd sourced from app), and street view close up pictures when you get near your destination. And the car dock mode gives bigger, simpler icons and auto-voice mode (see video):

Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.

Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.

Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.

Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.

Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.

Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.

Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

Here’s Navigation in the Droid dock, followed by an image gallery for the app:

Video Demo Of Google Maps Navigation

Official Google Navigation Video

Screenshot Gallery Of Google Maps Navigation

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The reason is that almost all of the changes are very subtle. And unless you spend hours looking at Google Maps everyday, you probably aren’t going to realize when a road outline has been toned down, for example. But looking at the side-by-side images, it’s clear to see that the new look is much nice. Gone is much of the clutter cause by darkened street outlines.

In Google’s own words, from their post:

Today’s changes are intended to keep the same information-rich map while making it easier to pick out the information that is most useful.  The changes affect both the ‘Map’ and ‘Hybrid’ styles, and include numerous refinements to color, density, typography, and road styling worldwide. For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map.  Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.

Again, subtle, but much better. (Click on the images below to see more clearly.)

And just for the hell of it, I’ll embed one of the best music videos ever made.

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Google Maps been steadily crowdsourcing information from users and authoritative sources that who can share detailed information about the changes in the physical world, such as new roads, water bodies and more. Because of this flux of information, Google has released a new base map dataset.

Thanks to info from both the USDA’s Forest Services and the US Geological Survey, Google has made a significant update to its maps, adding more detail about water bodies, parks, roads and more. For example, with the new data sat, you can now zoom in on roadways to figure out how large a road is. And Google has added in-depth info on locations like college campuses and bike trails.

The way Google crowdsources data from users has also been upgraded with the launch of a new tool that lets you communicate directly with Google about any updates that you think need to be made to our maps. On Google Maps, you’ll now notice a “Report A Problem” link to the bottom right of the map where you can easily let Google know if there have been changes to a particular location, destination or roads. Google says that they will confirm suggestions with other users and data sources and will be able to determine the edit within a month.

Previously, you could move map markers on maps and add locations to maps, but this is the first time that Google is deeply engaging user input to make maps more detailed and precise. Google has continuously iterated Maps to make the feature more useful, recently adding more details on traffic conditions. Perhaps Google is gearing Maps up for head-to-head competition from Apple’s new mapmaker.

Interestingly, We’ve heard that Google Maps has ended its partnership with digital map maker TeleAtlas in the U.S., but a spokeswoman for Google says that TeleAtlas continues to provide data in dozens of countries around the world for Google Maps.

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Yesterday, Search Engine Land noted that sponsored links (ads) are starting to show up in the Maps application on the iPhone. It would appear that Google is slowly adding some new features. But what’s odd is that these features are showing up without warning, and, as far as I can tell, without a way to turn them off.

While clearly, Google is not going to let you turn off sponsored links, the user-generated content element is odd. These pins show that some random person I don’t know was at the place I’m looking for, at some random time. It’s simply not useful at all.

I also wonder how Apple, which loves to have total control of its devices, feels about these additions. Google helped Apple build the default Maps application, but it is still one of Apple’s own apps and now it seems that Google can simply inject any content it wants into Maps from its end. Also a bit odd is that this particular piece of user-generated content comes from the location-based social network Plazes, which is owned by mobile rival Nokia.

I’m all for Google injecting user-generated content into Maps on the iPhone provided that it’s useful. So far, it doesn’t appear to be. There also needs to be a way to turn it off if you don’t want to see it. Without those two things, Maps on the iPhone could become a cluttered mess of useless information quickly. Perhaps that’s why Apple bought its own mapping company this summer.

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One of the original goals of Google has always been to help people find the information they are looking for and get out of the way as fast as possible. It was a point of pride, and in fact a design principle, to get people off the search results page to other places on the Internet. Yahoo was the site that tried to keep you from ever leaving, Google was the opposite.

Well, it was easier to send people away when Google was just a search engine. Now it has apps and Gmail and Google Maps and Google Books, and a lot of other reasons to stick around on Google itself. But there is still a clear demarcation between its content/communication sites and search. At least there was until late last week when it launched Google Places on Google Maps. Google Places is a local search page for restaurants and other local businesses that brings together the address, phone number, Website, maps, description, directions, photos and reviews all on one page.

When you click on a pin for a local business or place of interest on Google Maps a bubble will open up, and if you click “more info” sometimes it will take you to the Google Places page. So far, so good. Google Places is simply making Google Maps better, right?

The concerns arise, however, back on Google’s main search page, where Google is indexing these Places pages. Since Google controls its own search index, it can push Google Places more prominently if it so desires. There isn’t a heck of a lot of evidence that Google is doing this yet, but the mere fact that Google is indexing these Places pages has the SEO world in a tizzy.

And Google is indexing them, despite assurances to the contrary. If you do a search for the Burdick Chocolate Cafe in Boston, for instance, the Google Places page is the sixth result, above results from Yelp, Yahoo Travel, and New York Times Travel. This wouldn’t be so bad if Google wasn’t already linking to itself in the top “one Box” result, which shows a detail from Google Maps. So within the top ten results, two of them link back to Google content.

Your chances of clicking on a Google page for this particular search are pretty high. Google isn’t sending you away anywhere. And if you do go to the Google Places page for Burdick Chocolate, it is made up of rehashed content from other sites: snippet descriptions from InsiderPages, Judy’s Book, a menu link from AllMenus, photos from CityGuide and Yelp, and reviews from Igougo and CitySearch. On the right is a small Google Map and below that are Google search ads.

It’s actually a pretty useful page, and there is certainly value in aggregating all of this information in one place. Google might even license the data, which would mitigate any protests that it is “stealing” the content like we see with Google News. But nobody really cares about that. The real issue is whether or not Google is going to favor its own pages in its index when it comes to local search. SInce Google’s algorithm is a black box, there is no way to know one way or another. But the question is out there.

Maybe the Google Places page for Burdick Chocolate ranks highly only because Google used it as an example in its pre-briefings and a lot of bloggers subsequently linked to it. The point, though, is that these Google Places are getting into Google’s index. (Tartine Bakery is another example). Even if they make it onto the first page of Google search results for legitimate reasons, their very presence goes against the fundamental principle that Google’s main purpose is to link out to the best information on the Web, not to hoard the links for itself.

We know what will happen if it keeps going down this path. It will turn into Yahoo.

Update: It appears that Google is now taking steps to remove Places pages from its organic results. It’s added a “Disallow: /places/” tag to the robots.txt for Google maps. (The robots.txt tells Google’s search engine how to treat the content on a site, and a disallow tag instructs it not to crawl indicated portions of a site).

Update 2: A Google spokesperson came back with the following explanation:

From the time of launch, we did not intend for the Place Pages to be crawled or appear in organic results – we even confirmed that publicly. We did discover that some URLs were still open (the example in question, Burdick, was the one that we heavily promoted in all our blog posts, as Matt [Cutts] pointed out), so we’ve blocked those over the past 24 hours to stay consistent with our original plan for this launch. These should no longer appear in our organic search results.

Also, I know there have been some questions about the URL structure: they were designed to be “friendly” URLs with the specific intention of making them easier to share and link.

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All the details aren’t clear yet, as the game won’t launch until September 9. But it would appear that Hasbro, makers of the Monopoly game, is attempting to turn the franchise into a massively multi-player online game. Called “Monopoly City Streets,” here’s a brief description that is offered on the teaser site:

The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence.

Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent. Use MONOPOLY Chance Cards to sabotage your mates by building Hazards on their streets.

It’s also not clear if this game will be an official partnership with Google, or if Hasbro is simply using Google Maps APIs. But the tie-in goes a bit deeper, as is revealed on the blog it set up for the game (on yes, Google’s Blogger platform). A post from Friday reads:

We still need 3 new building designs and we’d like YOU to design them!

MONOPOLY and Google SketchUp fans worldwide be sure to check back from next Tuesday 8 September for entry details and the chance to show the world your ultimate 3D building creation.

So it’s not just Google Maps, but also SketchUp that Hasbro is utilizing for this game. The UK’s Guardian is reporting that the game will run for 4 months. They’re also reporting that players starting a new game will get $3 million to play around with.

Without seeing it in action, this sounds like a brilliant idea for a massively multi-player online game. You’ll apparently be able to buy an property in the world. Of course, the social element that links together will be key, and it’s not yet clear what that will be. The Monopoly City Streets blog uses Google Friend Connect, but perhaps the game will have its own social web.

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Any one who commutes in major cities knows the value of back roads when it comes to avoiding traffic on the highways during peak rush hour times. Google Maps just added a nifty feature that will show you live traffic conditions on arterial roads (non-highway roads) in selected cities. Google Maps will also show traffic patterns on main highways as well, helping you see what the least-trafficked route is for your commute.

When you zoom-in on the city you’re interested in and click the “Traffic” button in the upper-right corner of the map, you’ll see the traffic conditions of both arterial roads and highways. The colors correspond to the speed of traffic green is little to no traffic, yellow is medium congestion, red is heavy congestion, and red/black is stop-and-go traffic.

Google says that this feature can also be accessed on Google Maps for Mobile, which is particularly useful when trying to figure out the best route on the go. Google also shed a little bit of light as to how they crowdsource traffic info via Google Maps on mobile phones. When you enable Google Maps with My Location, the phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving. When Google combines your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, they can get an idea of traffic live conditions. They continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers.

Google assures users that they only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when the user has opted to enable location services on his or her phone.

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As an online free mapping service, Google Maps is a great product. But it’s lacking in certain parts of the world. And rather than pay people to go get information about those places, Google has smartly been using a service called Map Maker, which lets locals and people knowledgeable about the area edit it themselves. And this week, Google has added a couple important areas to the list: Mexico and Eastern Europe.

“These two launches have doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker,” Google notes today. That’s impressive, but even more impressive is the full list of countries that can now use Map Maker to improve local maps. And while Map Maker doesn’t work in places like the U.S. and other well mapped-out areas of the world, you can edit things on U.S. maps such as place locations. It seems clear that Google Maps is a wiki of sorts now, meaning the community is responsible for a lot of the data on it.

Now, Google still looks over this new country data, and then allows certain portions to “graduate” to actual Google Maps. But still, it’s a great idea to get more information in your system for free. I wonder how long it will be until Google lets users in the rest of the world in on the fun to edit roads and other features that are incorrect or not listed? Maybe you’ll be able to put in information when you know a road is under construction for a set period of time, for example. That data is out there for large projects, but it would be very useful on a day to day basis for small jobs when I’m trying to get somewhere on time.

Below find an impressive before and after picture of Lahore, Pakistan, after Google Map Maker did its thing.

Update: Google has reached out to me with another piece of information about the Map Maker initiative. Earlier this week, they announced that the Map Maker data set in Africa would be available for non-profits and NGOs to download to further promote mapping the areas. More information on that is here.

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Slowly but surely, Google Maps is filling up with more and more places. If you do a search in a major city, you are likely to find landmarks, museums, famous stores and restaurants labeled right on the map even if you did not specifically search for them.

If you pull up a map of midtown Manhattan, for example, you’ll see museums like MOMA and the American Folk Art Museum, as well as tourist attractions like the “Tree at Rockefeller Center.” But some of the famous buildings are also marked, like the Sony Building, the Trump Tower, and the CBS building.  Churches and chocolate stores show up as well.

High-end stores like Harry Winston and Takashimaya are also on the map, as are more common ones such as the Gap.  Some well-known restaurants are also highlighted.  La Cote Basque, an expensive French restaurant on 55th Street is on there, but so is Sapporo, a great Japanese noodle house on 49th.

When you click on a labeled building or landmark, an information window pops open with the exact address, phone number, description, and link to a Wikipedia article if available. And as you zoom in more places become visible. At some point the map could become pretty crowded, Google hopefully is looking at search history and click behavior to surface the most important places. Each place on the map becomes a visual search result. I like the direction this is going.

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Which countries are the worst greenhouse gas emitters? Now you can see for yourself on this handy Google Map created by a department of the UN and Google. The map shows changes in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2006. Green is good (a decrease in emissions) and purple is bad (an increase).

So who are the worst offenders? Topping the list is Sweden! The country has managed to increase its emissions by 110 percent over that time period. So much for Nordic purity. Following Sweden is Turkey (with a 103 percent increase) and Canada (with a 55 percent increase). Yes, Canada. What is it with these northern countries?

You’d think the U.S. would top the list, but it is actually only the tenth worst country with a 14 percent increase in emissions (still well within purple territory). It is kind of embarrassing that Russia is greener than we are. But at least we are better than Canada (and Sweden).

Or are we? The map itself lets you drill down into the data to find out. You can sort by industry, type of emission (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc), or year, and if click on a country it gives you a detailed breakdown of emissions by economic sector and other variables. For instance, over the 1990 to 2006 time span, Russia has actually seen a 29 percent decrease in emissions, but if you look at just 2006, Russia starts getting pretty purple, and rises to the No. 3 worst emitter. And the USA rises to No. 1.

Hey, we’re No. 1!

Sigh: Apparently, some people in comments and elsewhere thought this post was dead serious. It is really more about the cool Google Map application than the global warming data it illustrates. But for those readers who are humor-challenged (or Swedish), this post was in fact written with tongue firmly in cheek. You see how at the end I completely reverse myself and point out that the USA is actually the worst emitter, but then try to spin it as something to celebrate? Yeah, that would be the giveaway.

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Google Maps is an incredibly useful tool for searching for pretty much anything in a specific geographic area, but I used to find it annoying that I would have to conduct multiple, separate searches in Google Maps for various items along a route or point of interest. Now Google has added a feature that lets you conduct multiple searches within one search for directions.

This feature lets you add visual layers to a particular map as you add more search parameters. So let’s say you are searching for a particular route to get from one destination to another. You can now search for several restaurants and bars within that route. As you conduct multiple searches, you’ll see a blue bar at the bottom of the left side of the Maps page. You can click on it to expand the widget, which will list the searches that you have made. You can also turn searches on or off by clicking on the box to the side of each search. And each search is color coded, so you know which is which.

Google also recently added another helpful feature to its Maps product—the What’s Here option. If you right-click somewhere on a map, it will bring up a menu with a bunch of options, including “What’s here?” Google will then show you information about what is actually at the location you’re pointing at.

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For example, there are apparently a bunch of these markers in San Francisco already. One (which happens to be in my neighborhood) has been caught on camera. As you can see, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has his own Google Maps marker indicating that he likes La Boulange de Polk, a restaurant in the area. Newsom’s marker features a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge, other famous people have their own markers.

The statue is listed as being for “Summer 2009″ which seems to indicate that it will expire in a few months, and Google may remove it. But for now, this looks like a very smart way for Google to promote Maps. It’s also a good way to ensure that businesses list themselves on Maps, for the possibility that they’ll receive one of these markers, which are basically a (presumably) free endorsement of the establishment.

There are plenty of other famous people participating in this program including a lot of famous chefs endorsing restaurants they like, Kevin Rose (the co-founder of Digg), musicians (Moby, the guitarist of the Decemberists), and a whole host of others around the world.

Perhaps these things showing up is like the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where it signals a shift in evolution.

Update: Here’s another market at Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco [photos: flickr/Jeremy Franklin]:

Update 2: Here’s another one via TwitPic:

Update 3: Google has now officially announced the feature and has release this video about it:

[thanks Matt]

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If you are using either Google Chrome 2.0+ or Mozilla FireFox 3.5+, you’ll now notice a little dot in the upper left-hand corner of Maps, just above the Street View guy. If you click that dot, Google Maps will show you your location on the map. It does this using the W3C Geolocation API standard, according to Google.

So how well does it work? Pretty well. It got my location slightly wrong, but only by about a block. That’s not as good as it is on mobile devices, but remember, many of those have GPS, which is more accurate. Google Maps location is pulling from WiFi access points or, if none of those are around, your IP address.

This is an important step for Google. If it wants services like Google Latitude to take off, there needs to be ubiquitous location information no matter if you’re on your phone or your laptop. Location is also potentially huge for Google if it can use it to start serving up localized ads based on your current location. It of course already does this somewhat, but being able to exactly pinpoint you will work better.

Of course, there are privacy implications with that. And Google devotes a whole paragraph to that in its announcement:

Google takes privacy very seriously, so your location will never be used without your permission. The first time you use My Location on Google Maps, you’ll be asked to confirm that you’re happy to share your location with Google Maps, and you can always undo your decision. See the help center article on Privacy and My Location for more information about how your location is used.

If you don’t have these latest versions of Chrome or Firefox (the two browsers currently supporting the Geolocation standard), you can still get your location if you install Gears. Google says support for more browser is coming soon, and notes that if you’re using a browser that doesn’t currently support it, you won’t see the location dot.

Update: Lots of commenters are pointing out that Maps is placing them at completely wrong locations — sometimes in wrong countries.

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If you right-click somewhere on the map, it will bring up a menu with a bunch of options. The new last option allows you to select “What’s here?” And if Google knows — which it does for a lot of places — it will pop up information about what is actually at the location you’re pointing at. If it knows the name of say, a store that is there, it will give that to you. Otherwise, it will give you the address of where you are pointing.

And if you’re zoomed out, it works too. The example Google gives is that if you’re looking at a zoomed out view of the Galapagos Islands, using this feature can get you the name of each individual island. Same with Hawaii, as you can see below.

Sure, in some cases you could find out what was at certain points on a map previously by switching to satellite view, or better yet, Street View. But this is much easier.

And this technique, which is called “reverse geocoding,” has been a part of the Maps API for a little while now, according to Google. So you can use it on your maps as well.

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Moving around in Google Street View is not always intuitive. You always end up clicking aimlessly a few times before you can really figure out how to move about. Well, now navigating within Street View is easier thanks to the “pancake.” Google is adding a useful tool called the “pancake” to Street View on Google Maps that lets you travel to a new point within a photo panorama by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. Google says that it has been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas. As you move your mouse within Street View, you’ll see the pancake, which you can move up and down a street and then click on a restaurant, road, building or object nearby. The pancake is shown as a circle on roads and a rectangle when following the facade of a building.

The pancake will transport you to the best view of an object in that direction. Google also says that the pancake will often show a little magnifying glass in the bottom right to indicate that double clicking will zoom in on the current image rather than transport you to a closer location.

The pancake also prevents you from getting lost. If you want to go back to the original view of the street from the pancake, you can hit the return arrow in the address box to get back to the previous location. Previously, you could only move backward and forward along a street to view the next panorama, so the ability to quickly zoom in from anywhere to various spots along a particular road actually makes navigating within Street View much less frustrating.

Check it out in the embedded interactive Street View below, or watch the video:

View Larger Map

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Sometimes there are many ways to get from point A to point B, whether you are walking or driving. Until now, Google Maps’ directions feature has given you the route they consider the best and allows you to drag and drop the route to change your path. Today, Google Maps is adding functionality that suggests additional routes so that you can see all of them on the map for comparison.

Under a “Suggested Routes” heading, you will now be able to access other routes to the same destination. This is a feature that GPS systems in car, like a Garmin device, have been offering for quite some time so it makes sense that Google would want to catch up. Google says that they choose alternative routes bases on many factors, including distance, travel time, and number of turns. Google Maps boils this data down to what is the lowest “cost” and ranks the routes based upon the “cost.”

MapQuest doesn’t suggest alternate routes but the site does let you choose alternate routes by filtering directions by no toll roads, highways, and distance, which is a function Google Maps has as well.

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Henry Hudson never did find the Northwest passage to India, but this year marks the 400th anniversary of his third voyage—the one where he came to New York and sailed up what is now the Hudson River (he made it as far as modern-day Albany). Hudson showed that often it is what you stumble upon on your way to somewhere else that turns out to be your great discovery. To celebrate the anniversary, the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has charted all of Hudson’s voyages onto a Google map, along with overlays of historical maps. The overlays are kind of clunky, but just being able to see the actual routes Hudson took is kind of cool.

I only wish the custom map was available on the Google Maps site itself (maybe it is, but I wasn’t able to find it, although I did find this map of Hudson’s third voyage which was put together by an elementary school class). In fact, Google Maps should have an “Explorers section” where you could see famous expedition routes from Lewis and Clark’s to Shackleton’s voyage to Antarctica. Many of these have already been mapped out for Google Earth or as custom Google Maps, but it would be nice to have them all in one place as a section within Google Maps, or at least make Google could make them easier to find.

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Yesterday, a group of technology entrepreneurs from the UK on a skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (Verbier) lost two of their party around 4 PM CET. Other members of the group put out a request on Twitter in order to learn the numbers of their mobile phones, so they could use the signals to track them down.

According to follow-up tweets, one person (Jason) was rescued using a combination of GPS, Google Maps to determine longitude and latitude, and the signals returned from his iPhone, but another one (Rob) was still missing as the two had apparently been split up. It’s been 7 to 10 hours since the last Twitter messages at this point, so unfortunately we can only hope and not confirm if Rob has been found by now.

Below are a number of screenshots with Twitter messages from some of the group, including Alex Hoye (CEO of digital marketing agency Latitude, Michael Acton Smith from Mind Candy, Joshua Marsh and Hermione Way (TechFluff.tv) Michelle Dewbs (winner of The Apprentice).

Let’s hope everything is alright. We’re frantically tracking Twitter to learn more, and we’re not the only ones.

(Hat tip to Google Maps Mania)

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Transit planner HopStop launched its free iPhone application last week to rival the mobile version of Google Map’s Transit option. The application, with support from iPhone’s GPS functionality, offers all the same services as the website. This includes trip customization, maps marked with nearby subways and bus stops, a taxi mode that estimates time and cost of travel and contact information for taxi companies, and the ability to re-route a transit plan that is provided.

In the past, Hopstop was ahead of competitor Google Transit in terms of providing transit info for a widespread amount of metropolitan areas but Google has caught up (and maybe surpassed) with its Maps-based transit planner. And Google Maps is integrated with iPhone 3G’s GPS, making Google Transit a free native application that doesn’t have to be downloaded.

The first reviews posted on the iPhones apps store were fairly positive. Let us know what you think of the HopStop app in comments. Is it better than Google Transit on the iPhone?

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YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut are not included below because they are on their own domains, but YouTube would be second with 70 million unique U.S. visitors, and Blogger would be in the top 5 with 23.5 million. Orkut is not popular in the U.S., so it would not be a factor in this particular list. And I took out sorry.google.com, the domain Google uses to try to catch bots and spyware. It would have ranked No. 8.

Another notable trend that Quantcast measures is the rise of Google Book Search, which it claims surpassed Google News in visitors back in September. Perhaps the enhanced newspaper archive search features it introduced back then helped. Book Search visitors are now at 8.4 million vs. 7.4 million for Google News, according to Quantcast. Other measurement services such as comScore and Compete show Google News to still be bigger than Google Book Search. ComScore for instance shows Google News at 15.6 million unique U.S. visitors in November, compared to 7.8 million for Book Search. But both also show significant growth in Book Search visitors since the summer.

The Quantcast numbers are not completely reliable because Google’s sites have not been “Quantified” (the process Quantcast uses to collect its most accurate data). But they are roughly accurate. Below the Quantcast rankings, I’ve put the comparable rankings from comScore for U.S. visitors. Some of the rankings are different, but nine out of same products make it on each list. (The only difference is that comScore counts Google Product Search, while Quantcast counts Google Groups).

Quantcast

1. Google Search
2. Google Maps
3. Google Image Search
4. Gmail
5. Google Book Search
6. Google News
7. Google Video Search
8. Picasa
9. Google Earth
10. Google Groups

ComScore

1. Google Search
2. Google Image Search
3. Google Maps
4. Gmail
5. Google News Search
6. Google Video Search
7. Google Product Search
8. Google Book Search
9. Picasa
10. Google Earth

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It looks like Google will be adding to its election maps this voting season by offering a Google mapplet that will offer polling location information before the big day in November. (In case you are not sure where to go to vote).

The site is not yet complete, but it will provide users with “voting location, registration information, and more.” What that more is has yet to be determined since, as the site points out, “all voting location information will be available by mid-October. Until then, please check with your state or local election officials to verify your voting location.”

If you input your address into the service, it won’t return any of the promised information. Instead, it provides you with the number of days left to register to vote and helps you acquire an absentee ballot if you need one.

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As popular as Google is, it is not the most well trafficked map service. It is virtually tied with Yahoo Maps (and the new Yahoo Maps beta product which we reviewed here). Comscore says that Google Maps had 19.1 million unique visitors in March, whereas Yahoo had 20 million. Both were dwarfed by Mapquest, with a whopping 46.4 million unique visitors in March, more than Yahoo and Google combined.

In addition to Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and Mapquest, two others, Ask Maps and Microsoft Windows Live Local, also have compelling offerings.

We looked at all five of the current map services and examined their features and performance. Below is a feature by feature comparison.

The best? Yahoo Maps, for many reasons. More below.

Views

All the major map sites offer two or more different viewing options, including a satellite view, except Mapquest. All the other sites have hybrid views overlaying map information onto a satellite image. Google, Ask and Yahoo also offer a pure satellite image. Windows Live Local boasts one of the more interesting views called bird’s eye view, which adds a 3D dimension to the map image — a sexy feature, though its value lies more in dazzle factor than usability:

Zoom Champion

The zoom feature is a recognizable characteristic in most mapping services. Ask, Google and Windows Live Local all tied for the title of “Zoom Champion.” To determine the champ we performed a zoom test which focused on a single landmark and zoomed in as much as the application would allow. We then compared the five zoom levels to see which application allowed us to zoom in the most. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, check out our results below.

User Interface & Features

Yahoo Maps has the best product for obtaining basic driving directions. Its Flash interface offers both multi-point directions and live traffic information. Want the directions sent to your cell phone? Click a button, enter the number and you have them. Yahoo also has a very responsive interface. Taking into account all of these factors, it’s the best for personal use.

Ask Maps allows multipoint directions, and Mapquest will send directions to your phone, but no other service offers both. And Yahoo alone offers live traffic information.

Ask Maps appeared to load a little slower than Yahoo and Google. Ask.com does offer a notable directions feature called Auto-Drive which animates the entire route. Unfortunately, Ask.com was the only service that provided inaccurate directions in our driving directions test.

With Window Live Local the route from point-to-point is not marked with a line like its competitors. This made it difficult to see the actual route. Contrastingly, the service introduces a pushpin feature enabling viewer-determined points on a map. This feature also is a social twist as pushpin points of interest can be saved and shared with others via another feature called a scratch pad.

API

Offering an API has become an invaluable marketing resource. The resulting mashup applications offer free marketing and buzz around a web 2.0 product. Mashups aside, mapping solutions in commercial use can have the same affect.

Google sports the most popular map API and is used in a number of applications such as Ning, CommunityWalk and others.

Google’s API isn’t the best, but it is by far the most used service for mashups.

Expect that to change somewhat over time. Yahoo offers the widest selection of map development APIs (both Flash and Ajax). And recently, Zillow , with its fuzzy number Zestimates, incorporated the relatively new bird’s eye view offered by Windows Live Local via the Virtual Earth API.

Mapquest also has recently featured an open API and even prodded developers to take action by creating a developers challenge contest. Amazon’s A9 Map Beta is a notable Mapquest implementation since it associates street level images with streets on a map to produce a unique mapping experience.

Yahoo is the only service with mapping on web-enabled mobile devices without a download. Google Local Mobile Beta is a free downloadable mapping application, but it does not work on every mobile device or carrier. Mapquest Mobile is a subscription model which starts at $3.99 per month, but access to this service is also contingent on your mobile carrier and device.

Summary

Mapquest is the most popular mapping service but lags on features and usability. Google is the most notable and has a ubiquitous API. Windows Live Local dazzles with its creative views and features but falls short of the others in direction functionality. Mapquest offers a number of features but still is missing satellite imagery, which makes it trail the competitors in core functionality. Ask Maps is a worthy competitor but had the highest error rate of the group.

Overall, Yahoo Maps was by far the best application tested. Its fast Flash interface, multipoint directions, live traffic information, and easy send-to-mobile feature make it the hands down winner. It also features the most robust API options.