After Google sent me a bill for their map service, I decided to switch to OpenLayers maps, which are free. And I quickly came to like them better. At first, I thought the satellite imagery was neat, but it turns out that often things are hidden under trees. Also, the coordinates on the satellite imagery are less-than-accurate. Google’s street maps are also less-than-accurate, and also less-than-informative, lacking accurate borders and labels ( although they do have lots of advertising! )
As I got the hang of OpenLayers, I started to redo a lot of things and simplify, getting rid of a lot of stuff I had done to make up for the shortcomings of Google Maps. OpenLayers maps look a lot like USGS quadrangles, and don’t need a lot of help, just zoom in and there is a wealth of information. Google’s maps are also strongly colored, which makes it difficult at times to do anything with them. OpenLayers uses nice muted colors that are easy to write over.
But satellite imagery is still interesting and informative, so I added links to both Google Earth and Bing servers. A great deal of functionality comes from an plugin I wrote to help-out the main maps plugin. I’ve also made a few changes and bug fixes to that, which I hope the developer will eventually incorporate. The irony of this, for Google anyway, is that the free products are actually much better than the paid ones.
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