More about Google Maps in Europe

Earlier this week I reported that Google released street maps for.. *ahem*, Europe. I was sternly corrected by many of you in places like Latvia and other Baltic countries that the street data was not for "ALL" of Europe as I had stated in my post. Thanks to everyone that helped to let others know how the data looked in your corner of the world in the comments section of that post.

Google has since released separate Google Maps sites for some of the countries included in the update. Now when visiting http://maps.google(.de,.es,.fr,.it) you reach localised versions of Google Maps for Germany, Spain, France and Italy:


Thanks to Ogle Earth for this tip. Also in this Ogle Earth posting there is also some helpful information about the status of one-way streets and directions for the new street data.

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In other news, here is the posting from the Official Google Blog about the release of street maps in Europe. Here is a quote from Google Maps product manager Steven Crossan: "This has been a global effort with Google teams in Paris, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, New York, Mountain View, Kirkland, Sydney, London, Dublin, and Zurich working together for much of the past year to build a truly "local" product." He goes on to state that for developers, Version 2 of the Google Maps API will need to be used to make this new street data present in your Google Maps mashups.