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European Google mashers, rev your engines.
It appears Google’s finally added driving directions and other street-level information to its Google Maps for Europe. Google Blogoscope first reported on the development on April 25. The report has been confirmed by a number of sources.
As with any new feature, some of the warts are showing. One commenter at Blogoscope jokes that Malta appears to be underwater, thus the “victim of global warming.” And there are suspiciously too few roads in Belarus.
But there are lots of raves as well. With the new level of details, another commenter notes, he can get to work mashing up his own home-brewed Internet feature with Google Maps, something that’s surely welcome news to Google as it looks to conquer Europe.
Mashups of this kind (when a Web feature dips into Google Maps for data) have helped Google Maps become a significant challenger to Yahoo Maps, MapQuest and other industry incumbents in the United States. Google Maps mashups from European developers could serve Google just as well.