But the days where Google Maps and Google Earth ruled the online world could soon be over, as a new breed of online maps battles for space in the search sphere.
The biggest news of the week has been the launch of Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope - a research project that's been years in the making, whose profile was undeniably raised by the news that it made pioneering blogger and former Microsoft employee Robert Scoble cry.
At first glance, WorldWide Telescope seems to be Microsoft's answer to Google Sky - a feature announced in August 2007, that lets Google Earth users expand their usual viewing experience and explore the heavens from Earth. However, delve a little deeper and Microsoft's project is much more. Using images from several NASA telescopes - including the Hubble Space Telescope, Mars Rovers and the Chandra X-ray Observatory - WWT lets users experience the cosmos in normal, infrared and non-visible light.
Access to "terabytes" of data means amateur astronomers can discover new planets and moons at the touch of a button, and embark on ready-made tours of the stars. One tour called 'Dust and Us', for example, is conducted by Alyssa Goodman, a Harvard astronomy professor, and explores the dark regions in galaxies, where celestial bodies are formed.
To date, Virtual Earth - Microsoft's answer to Google Earth - hasn't gained too much attention. In fact, its popularity pales in comparison to that of Google Earth
However, the launch of WWT (still in beta), could change all that - especially in a search climate where the tide seems to be turning towards what's perceived to be Google's cavalier attitude towards privacy. Google Street View, for instance, has attracted several complaints from users in the USA, Canada and Australia over its unauthorised use of people's images - though reports have emerged that the search engine has now begun blurring faces in the programme.
In addition to Microsoft's valiant effort to claw back some of the online maps market from Google, several mobile mapping companies have started to launch their own onslaughts on the mobile world - one of the few markets where Yahoo!'s services still show Google any real competition.
Yesterday, MobileCrunch revealed that Schmap - a popular publisher of free online travel guides - has opened up access to their guides on the iPhone and iPod Touch. And with guides to major cities in the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the new tool could be a real factor in driving away iPhone traffic from Google.
Mobile manufacturers Nokia aren't backing down lightly either - at the Where 2.0 conference in California yesterday, Nokia officials unveiled an early version of Maps on Ovi, the company's still fledgling social media site. A recent blog post from Wired writer Dylan Tweney claims that Nokia's efforts at mobile maps is "impressive", with screen that refreshes quickly and the ability to tilt or spin your map at considerable speed. What's more, when Maps on Ovi is eventually released, Nokia executives claim that they plan to publish an API that will allow developers to write compatible applications on either PCs or Nokia handsets - but whatever these applications may be, they won't include Google Maps.
Rather convincingly, Tweney states:
"[Nokia's] vision is compelling because it matches the way people actually use their phones, rather than the way engineers think about designing mobile apps. And if anyone can be a credible competitor to Google, Nokia certainly can, with its ability to deploy software and services to a vast army of Nokia phone users."
So could Google be seeing a move away from its key online mapping features - in both the PC and mobile spheres? It seems more possible now than ever, especially if Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope takes off the way in the way it's expected to. And with Yahoo! stepping up its geographical tools as well - in the form of its Internet Location Platform - it's likely that the search giant will be feeling the pressure to pull something truly ground-breaking out of the bag during the next round of Google Earth and Maps updates.
