Yahoo launches YahooMaps for India..looks good, works well

Yahoo has launched YahooMaps for India. The application has just gone live. I spent 15 minutes of my Sunday morning tinkering with it and I am impressed. The application works well, the maps are superior in readability as compared to MapmyIndia (India’s best online mapping application); the maps also seem to be reasonable well populated with data about local facilities and businesses (at least for the bigger Indian cities)

Its basic layout and design is similar to what has become a standard for most online mapping applications. The interface is ajaxified and the tiled maps were downloading fairly fast on my 256 kbps broadband connection. You can search by specifying the street, locality, city or state. You can also search for local utilities (or businesses) like hotels, cinema halls, police stations etc. You can zoom into the map by double clicking, though the zooming interaction is flaky and unintuitive (I think, zooming is best done on GoogleMaps). There is a collapsible window that shows the map inset. And you can chose from three views- map, satellite or a hybrid of both.

Something interesting to note is that the mapping data seems to be sourced from CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapmyIndia. This would mean that MapmyIndia is not shying away from selling its data to a global giant like Yahoo, which could be its biggest competitors in the coming days (for online maps). This makes perfect sense because CEI is much more than just MapmyIndia. It is a GIS pioneer and is the single largest repository of digital spatial data in India. This also brings home the point that reliable mapping data is the single biggest barrier to entry in this space (in India). (I must add that this inference is purely based on what I see on YahooMaps. I’d probably write to MapmyIndia to get a confirmation on this) The satellite data seems to be sourced from I-Cubed.

Update on 6/4/07: I have received a confirmation from MapmyIndia about their deal with Yahoo; other deals are forthcoming in the near future as well.

The readability of Yahoo’s maps is much better than MapmyIndia’s own maps. And the mapping data seems to be fairly well populated, specially for metros. I searched for Green Park, in New Delhi, where my office is located. I could locate many restaurants, hotels, movie halls etc in its vicinity. Just to cross check, I also searched randomly for two smaller cities - Allahabad in UP (my hometown) and Indore in MP (one of my cousin stays there). The basic maps that come up are good, though searching for hotels, restaurants etc in these cities did not throw up anything meaningful. Something that is missing is the ability to embed the map into your blog or website, which is possible with MapmyIndia, and which can be very useful for virality.

Overall, the application looks great for a start. And when you see this in continuation of the mashups sites for Indian cities, that Yahoo launched sometime back, you can discern the efforts Yahoo is making to become a mainstream internet portal for India (Watch out- Rediff, Indiatimes, Sify). It does not take a soothsayer to predict that the YahooMaps site will soon get integrated into the mashup sites (might already have been done, for I haven’t checked).

Other mapping applications covered on Webyantra -

- MapmyIndia rocks Indian Web2.0 with GoogleMap type digitised mapping
- MapmyIndia adds killer feature…embedding map snippets into blogs, websites
- OnYoMo….making life better in Delhi & Bangalore
- Mapunity…a social development focused GIS solution