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October 19, 2005

Google Looking To Do Real Estate Listings On Google Maps?

Good Morning Silicon Valley points to Google Earth digs deeper at the San Jose Mercury News which covers Google talking with CoStar, apparently the biggest commercial real estate data provider, to put real estate data on Google Maps. Kind of a no brainer that Google should do so on this one. After all, places like Oneonemap and HousingMaps are great for how they blend housing listings with maps. But most people don't know about them. They'd rightly expect that Google and gang ought to be offering such mashups themselves.

It also demonstrates what I told a journalist recently about APIs not perhaps being as altrustic as they seem. Give the world an API to your service, and it's a nice way to let everyone develop new ideas that you might later decide to do yourself, if they seem successful. It's like Google's 20 percent time on steroids, because non-Google developers still end up doing work for you.

Postscript from Gary: Yahoo Real Estate allows you to map apartment rentals onto Yahoo Maps. Simply click the "Map It" button.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at October 19, 2005 2:46 AM