All your mash-up are belong to us
2005-10-20 21:28 | Permanent Link | LocativeAdena pointed out an article from the New York Times in the All Points Blog today. While most people would focus on the gushing hype, Adena zeroed in on something else. She quoted a part of the article that talked about Google wanting to cash in on a share of Trulia's earnings. This should not have come as a surprise to Trulia since they clearly read the fine print before getting their Google license key.
That led me to head over to Trulia.com to see what all the fuss is about.
It's a real estate search site that uses Google Maps as a way to show you where properties are located. Using Google Maps, you can zoom in on an area you might be interested in. I tried my own town, but they have not yet begun to operate in Massachusetts. So instead I entered 94114, one of the Zip Codes in their examples. I decided to look at this place on Roosevelt Way. Here are the map and satellite views.
You can find full size views here: map, satellite
Other than that, it was not immediately clear what they were using Google Maps for. Well, sure, there's the snazzy AJAX interface, but perhaps the real value of Google Maps is in the data. But not so fast!
I headed over to trusty TerraServer USA and entered the address. They have 3 views to offer. An "Urban Areas" view from February 27, 2004. An "Aerial Photo" from August 25, 1993, and a "Topo Map" from July 1, 1978.
The three views in full size: urban areas, aerial photo, topo map You can also visit the TerraServer site and see for yourself.
Quite pertinent to real estate, the site offers up a "House and Home Demographics" section, which for this patch of San Francisco promised a link to "Schools, Crime and Demographics for 94114". Sadly, the link goes to MSN.com and yields a cryptic error...
So it looks like Trulia could save some bucks and use TerraServer imagery. How about the road maps? Well, the Census Bureau comes to the rescue. You can find this view at their mapping engine.
Or you can see it live by visiting the Census Bureau.
Things are a little less rosy here. You can see that the Census data was missing Fairbanks Street. But Google also didn't tell us about the Museum or the playground that are nearby. Or were in 1978.
The bottom line? You can't beat Google for convenience. But if you're willing to poke around a bit, you may be able to beat them on price. At least when they decide to see if they can get a piece of the action.
( For those of you unfamiliar with the joke in the title - Wikipedia has a good explanation. )
