Misconception about v3

[John Coryat]

It seems there is a misconception about both the purpose of v3 and the path to development. From some of the posts I've been following, many developers think v3 is the replacement for v2, and essentially they should migrate their apps to v3 or be left behind. Disappointment soon sets in when the realization that certain well used and loved features of v2 aren't present.

From my understanding, v3 isn't a direct replacement for v2 but instead is a complete re-write from scratch. The v2 maps API is more of a sibling to the regular Google Maps public site in that it has all the same features, benefits and extreme weight of that application. It's also burdened by a lot of code that makes it difficult to be modular, efficient and extensible.

V3 on the other hand, being a complete re-write, has very few features at this point but is extremely efficient, fast loading, modular and potentially much more extensible. It will be quite a while (if ever) before v3 has the feature set of v2, on the other hand, many features that are added to v3 will be open source, which will make development of new features much easier and also make them easier to debug.

I would recommend that any developer who is considering using v3 think of it as a "mobile only" API at this point and redesign any apps they wish to migrate to v3 as such. Thinking in the "mobile" mode will greatly simplify the application which will also make it simpler to port.

Of course, this is only my personal opinion, any other thoughts on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

--
-John Coryat, USNaviguide LLC

[Mickey Kataria]

John, thanks for this post. I'd like to add some clarifications about
our intentions for v3.

I tried to say this in the launch blog post (http://
googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/05/announcing-google-maps-api-
v3.html) and I'll repeat it here for those who didn't see it: "We
wanted to get this in your hands as soon as possible, so we've
intentionally released it early, and with a basic set of features.
We're releasing it in Labs because it's not fully baked yet; we want
to get your feedback on the new design and what you'd like to see in
future revisions now that we have a chance for a fresh start."

Not everyone will be able to migrate their apps to v3 immediately and
we know that. However, many mashups don't use more than the basic
features we've included in the initial release, and that's the reason
we started with this specific set. v3 will be in Labs for a while as
we add more functionality and nail down the behavior based on feedback
from developers. This is our chance to improve the API based on the
learnings from v2 over the last 3+ years.

I would urge you to not think of this as a "mobile only" API. While
mobile browsers are a new focus for us, the API is fully supported on
desktop browsers (including the addition of Chrome). The improvements
in speed we've made are equally applicable to desktop and mobile
browsers. We intend to keep it this way as we add more and more
functionality over the coming months.

For now, as pointed out in a few other threads, the current set of
available features is documented in the reference. You can follow our
progress on the blog, and feel free to send us feedback via this forum
or the issue tracker.


Mickey Kataria
Product Manager
Google Maps APIs