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applications. On July 2, 2012, the Website reported 2,615
mapping mashups out of the 6,695 available
3
. Among these
mapping applications, 2,385 used the Google Maps API
4
,
only 175 used Bing Maps by Microsoft, and 135 mashups
used Yahoo Maps.
How can such an overwhelming success be explained?
Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle suggest three advantages of
Google's mapping API: a clear and interactive interface, as
maps are loaded quickly and a customer-oriented service
enables their maps to be displayed on any Webpage
[GIB 06, p.xx]. Moreover, using this service was free and
unlimited to start with
5
. And finally, a dynamic community
of
developers
has
contributed
to
the
large
number
of
applications using Google Maps today [RIE 08].
Although Web 2.0 is often portrayed as the transition
point from a static to a user-generated content-based Web, it
is also characterized by the development of “platforms” in
addition to the Web of hyperlinks. The Web of platform
was presented by Tim O'Reilly as one of the characteristics
of Web 2.0 [O'RE 05] and refers to the fact that a high
number of Websites are no longer single pages but
rather platforms, which makes their re-use more practical.
This generalization facilitates interoperability among the
services and the creation of new applications based on
online data. With this new setup, APIs play an important
3 www.programmableweb.com/mashups.
4 www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory/1?sort=mashups.
5 It is to be noted that the fare policy embraced by Google Maps has changed
several times since its creation: in October 2011, Google decided to charge
access to the Google Maps API from a certain number of queries per day. See:
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2011/10/27/google-maps-usage-fees-how-
many-developers-will-have-to-pay. Then, as a response to a high number of
large Web companies (such as Foursquare) changing to OSM, Google
reduced its tariffs. See: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/22/google-maps-api-
gets-massive-price-cut-in-the-wake-of-developer-defections.
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