With the Google Maps API anyone could easily integrate Google Maps into their own websites and applications (even mobile). Getting started and developing is fairly easy since there are handy developer guides, tutorials, references, and tons of examples on the API’s respective site.

Google Maps API Family

Currently, there are six different flavors of the Google Maps API. I’ll briefly describe the ones that need more explanation.

• Google Maps Javascript API
• Google Maps API for Flash
• Google Earth API
• Google Static Maps API – For embedding a simple image of a map
• Google Maps Web Services – Useful for directions, information about places…
• Google Maps Data API – For viewing, updating, and storing map data

Getting Started with Google Maps API

First of all, signing up is easy. You simply need to apply for a single Maps API key at the Google Maps API Sign Up page. All you need is a Google account and provide a website URL in which you will use the API.

My project using Google Maps API

Then after that, simply follow the developer’s guide to the respective API of your choice to get started. I’ve used the Google Maps Javascript API quite a bit and it was fairly easy to get it up and running. I started by reading The “Hello World” of Google Maps to get started and then after that followed the rest of the tutorials and tried out lots of the examples. The neat thing about examples is that you can view the code to see how developers implement different features onto their Google Maps.

So if you ever had any ideas for an application that could make use of a map, you should definitely give Google Maps API a try. Below is a video of Google Maps API and Yelp.