Lokesh Pant, in "Google Maps API", points out that Google and Yahoo have both released APIs for using their Maps service, with Google Maps using Javascript and Yahoo Maps Web Services using a REST API. Both of them require an id, and both provide the ability to brand the resulting images.

There are two approaches at work here. Google uses a client-side approach, with Javascript; Yahoo provides a page accessed via RESTful services. Which is more appropriate, and more useful?

Depends. If my client is not browser based ... .

Am I missing something? I thought both of these API's have been released for quite some time. I wrote about my experience using Google Maps and a free geocoding service on my blog:

http://www.screwtheman.com/archives/2005/07/google_maps.html

According to the article and a quick scan of the Google and Yahoo Maps API documentation, you have to supply longitude and latitude to the Google services whereas Yahoo accepts street addresses.

Google points to free geocode services to solve this, but I think it's one thing to assume that a Google or Yahoo web service will be available to your application and another to assume that some free geocoder site or service will be available and hope that they will maintain a stable URL format or API (granted, some of these may be actual web services and have a published API - I didn't look very hard). Even if you maintain a list of geocoder sites and so on, it's simply easier and more robust to have just one external dependency.

So, it looks like a big +1 to Yahoo so far - at least for my most common use cases (and considering that I've only spent about 5 minutes looking at the documentation for either service).

Telcontar is presently hosting an Alpha version of our Drill Down Server web service.

http://www.telcontar.com/products/dds/dds_webservicesapi.html
and
http://www.telcontar.com/developers

We are compliant with the Open Location Services (OpenLS) XML API. We provide a java client API, as well as a web based tool that allows you to play with the XML requests and responses.

We have a geocoder, reverse geocoder, map portrayal, and routing service. All these web services are backed by our Drill Down Server, which powers some the highest transaction volume mapping and routing sites on the web.

Please register for the alpha and give us some feedback.

-geoff

How on earth is this news? I stumbled on google maps April 5th of this year... this is August, and this guy says they released the API yesterday!?

As for the comparison of Yahoo vs Google maps: Google wins.

I really wish Google had free geocoding- especially in places like Canada where there's an oligopoly of US cartography companies and no free geocoding data. At least Americans have free TIGER files- we're SOL, as are most other countries.

That said, I can't manipulate the Yahoo map once I've sent a client their way, and the client has to deal with a rather inferior UI.

Too bad neither cover europe ;(

Too bad doing things in Javascript are about 100 times easier than the Web Services monstrosity our techy community invented.