14 DAY TRIAL // Five years have passed since a Chicago-based web developer reversed engineered the source code of a Google embedded map to use it in his project. Since then, Google has opened up its service and launched 5 major versions of its Maps API, the most successful and used API on the web. And, yes, bigger than Twitter's.
It all started in 2005, when Adrian Holovaty launched a website using Google Maps and crime data from Chicago's Police website to build a custom map presenting the most dangerous areas of the town. The website was a huge hit, winning several awards, including the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism and being named by The New York Times as one of best ideas in web development for 2005.
Soon after, Google launched the first version of its API, followed in recent years by the Maps API for Flash, Maps API Premier for commercial and enterprise usages, the Static Maps API and an upgrade called Maps API v3, especially built for mobile device usage.
Despite the fact that's five years old, the Maps API sees the same interest it did when it was outed, their competition in geo-location and online maps barely getting noticed.
Statistics from ProgrammableWeb show that during the last two weeks, 20% of all apps were using the Google Maps service, while in an all-time top, Google Maps rules the charts with 43% usage, next to Flickr with 11%.
“The Google Maps API has established itself as the most popular Google API and the most deployed service-based API on the web. We continue to be amazed by how popular this API continues to be for web and mobile apps being developed today […] and now 5 years later more than 350,000 active websites make use of it.” said Mike Pegg, Google Maps developer.
Download Google Maps API usages from our Webscripts Index using the Google Maps and Google Maps API tag search.