Introducing Google Mapplets, A Mashup of Mashups on Google Maps
I know that's a lot of "maps" there in the title. It's a bit of an exaggeration actually but that's how I see this new Google tool called mapplets. Now what are mapplets? From the Google Maps site …
Context & Ripple Effects
Mapplets arrive barely two years after third-party developers began building mashups on Google Maps within weeks of its launch — the API proved demand, but every mashup lived on its own site. Google's own LatLong blog frames the same-day release as Maps 2.0: the map itself becomes the container, letting users stack content like Zvents' San Francisco event listings directly onto the base map.
The pickup was broad for a product launch: Webware and TechCrunch both ran the story on launch day, treating it less as a feature drop than as Google formally declaring Maps a platform for navigating home listings, travel data, and other location-based information.
First-order effects
- Developers who had each built standalone Maps mashups can now package that code as Mapplets that run inside Google Maps itself, inheriting the map's audience instead of driving traffic to their own pages.
Second-order effects
- Data owners like Zvents gain distribution inside Google's interface rather than through individual mashup sites, shifting leverage toward whoever hosts the container; rival mapping providers face pressure to open their own platforms to third-party layers or cede the developer ecosystem.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mapping products consolidate around hosted execution platforms where third-party geo-code runs on the provider's infrastructure — a structural move from selling a map view to operating the layer where location apps live, with attendant questions of platform control.
The trend: Consumer web mapping is shifting from embedded-API mashups on independent sites toward provider-controlled platforms that host third-party geographic applications directly.