Google map goes SaaS - Mapplets

Posted by Charles | May 31, 2007 .

Software as a Service (SaaS) is THE thing that every software related company is working (or worry about.) Most of Google’s applications are SaaS based. Google Maps is a exception that it just servered, until now. Google Mapplets changes the game.

Google’s ultimate goal is to index all the data they can touch. Just serving map really didn’t give them too much in term of geo data and large amount of free geo developers. With Google Map API, all sorts of geo applications are developed but they are all somewhere else outside of Google’s data center. Now with Google Mapplets, a Google Gadget actually, you can develop a geoweb mini application. It will be hosted on Google’s machine. You can embed the application into your main web application. The Google mapplets host, gmodules.com will serve the Mapplets for you and does the cache too.

So, all of sudden, there is a map widget market created by Google. There will be all sorts of Mapplets in their catalog. I wouldn’t be surprised that there will be business models surrounding this widget platform. Google gets all the applications and geo data too, sweet.

Expecting Yahoo and Microsoft follow the steps.