Google India Launches MapMaker; Takes On WikiMapia
Considering the success of Wiki-Mapia in India, it isn’t suprising Map Maker was a product developed by Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) Indian engineering team. Take a quick look at the most described cities*, and Bombay tops the list on Wiki-mapia with 55,577 listings, followed by Calcutta at the second spot and Chennai on fourth. Infact, out of the Top 20 most described cities, 14 are Indian, with 4 out of 5 making it to the top 5 although Hindi is the 7th in the most used languages list. Do note however that a large volume of these listings happen to be listings of individual residences. Mapmaker itself heavily draws upon edit tools inspired by Wiki-Mapia, however, it’s not as arbid in its moderation system as the latter. Depth of listings seems to have increased already, take for example this medical and general store, situated in Sion (W). The service seems to be the second in a series of Google products, after Knol, that are attempting to capture a percentage of the user-base that wiki’s have garnered by replicating their services. Other than India, Google Map Maker is available in 57 countries in Asia, the Island Nations, and the Caribbean.
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Comments (10)
Sep 1, 2008 1:01 AM
The thing is, What does the contributor get out of this? Google makes the money from advertising. The contributor gets squat. At least with Wikimapia, the non profit, hobbyist angle works.
Sep 5, 2008 4:53 AM
which one is better?
Jan 20, 2009 2:04 AM
which is the better one ?
Jan 30, 2009 3:39 PM
There is another wikimapia clone (if you can call it that) for India only called http://www.mapyouraddress.com , that attempts at creating a user based address and street locator. Looks like the google maps api has opened up a whole new world of opportunities.
Feb 20, 2009 7:16 PM
Google Map Maker, i love it…..
May 5, 2009 1:25 AM
i like christian louboutin ,google,is another way to find
May 20, 2009 5:08 AM
tennis racket
May 22, 2009 2:38 PM
Google’s work is always different and innovative
Jun 9, 2009 11:15 AM
recently,i use some tools of google.but its data seems to update more slowly .
Jun 10, 2009 1:18 AM
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