Since when is Ask.com providing maps? Did I miss something? Not only they are catching up to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, ESRI, etc. but also they offer some detailed street maps of Europe. Quite exciting for us here in Europe!
The whole application is very similar to other (familiar) mapping products. Based on image tiles (no Flash so far), with zooming, panning and search options as usual.
Basically the gazetteer seems to work for european places. Well, basically. I wasn’t able to locate Vienna (“Wien”), the austrian capital, instead it suggested me almost every european one-horse-town containing the word “Wien”. But, after all, I achieved to find out the walking distance from “Waidhofen an der Ybbs” to “Sankt Pölten”. Switching between walking and driving gives you different routes, as it should be.
What’s missing, or at least it was hiding from me, is an API or a documentation respectively. I’m not sure if Ask.com is working on an API or if they simply don’t want you to take advanage of their maps and embed them within other websites.
However, good to see a more detailed Europe appearing in those mapping products. Since our INSPIRE will probably end up as NMA-coopartion to avoid publicly available geodata we will partly depend on the goodwill of those companies.
Update #1:
The Cartography weblog and All Points Blog already reported yesterday about it. Check those sites for some more information on Ask.com maps.