The Google Maps Behemoth
Last week, Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, made a blog post announcing 100 million users a month for Google Maps for Mobile. In a fragmented, emergent mobile world, mapping is one area where there is a dominant leader. (Note that Gundotra’s post also includes a nifty little graph of Google Maps for Mobile’s evolution over the past five years.)
Hiding behind the mapping front end is Google’s frontal assault into the local search and small-business advertising market. The functionality Google Maps provides on a mobile device is truly amazing, compared with what you could do two years ago.