1. As much as I find this to be a very neat service, isn't it against Google's TOS, in particular: "You may not ... display a Google Brand Feature as the most prominent element on any page on your web site". I may be misreading, but the map certainly is the most prominent element in the page. It would be nice to get this cleared up as I can't see anything good coming out of a G-maps API enabled app if the map has to be a tiny fraction of the web page.

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by RBA

2. That's an interesting question. It seems like there are two contradictory messages -- one from the ToS and a more recent message coming out as a result of the opening of the Google Maps API, which essentially invites people to embed Google Maps on their own site. Considering they're giving props to the craiglist + google maps mashup ( http://housingmaps.com/ ) up on the Google blog ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/world-is-your-javascript-enabled_29.html ), it looks like the more recent "take our maps, please" message supercedes the ToS in some sense.

Plus... it makes sense from a branding perspective. It's a ton of free publicity and links to Google/Google maps.

Posted at 8:05PM on Dec 18th 2005 by barb dybwad