The Slow Death of the Google #Maps #API

a good read, with useful links for those interested in building their own maps – always handy, its so difficult to keep up to date these days!

I have been planning a great April Fools joke for Google Maps Mania this year. .. The post would explain that:

• there seems little sign of the Google Maps API team returning from their two year vacation
• that Google no longer seems interested in developing the Google Maps API
• at the same time the MapBox team has continued to innovate and has now become the maps API of choice for most developers. 

It would have been a funny April Fool’s joke because there is more than an element of truth in the idea that MapBox and LeafletJS have usurped Google Maps as the API of choice for many map developers.

…

For me the last major innovation of note from the Google Maps API team was back in June 2012 with the release of animated symbols. During that time MapBox and LeafletJS have emerged as a major players in online mapping and both seem to be continually innovating while the Google Maps API team seem to be happy just treading water.

Yesterday MapBox announced MapBox plugins, a collection of great libraries that developers can add to their maps by simply hotlinking to the source files. The libraries include a marker clustering solution, Leaflet Draw (a host of map drawing tools),  Leaflet Fullscreen and a number of other useful libraries. You can check out the plugins in action on the MapBox Examples page.