After adding walking directions a few weeks ago, Google Maps is now bringing a simplified layout to its Maps. The announcement starts by 3 words that could be Google’s motto: “less is more”. Basically, the map displayed is a little bigger, and the search box stands on top of the map. This means less cluster, more room, and a friendlier way to surf maps in general.

While Google Maps’ main challenge is to bring the whole wide world to the world wide Web, the challenge for RIA built on top of Google Maps is to the right ergonomy to squeeze in additional information: listings, marker descriptions, geographic information… As Frederic Lardinois from RWW mentions, “now that the tabs are gone, there is a stronger focus on the search form“. Good point. I guess that once again, even for online maps, search is going to be the dominant behavior to find geographic information (instead of listings or marker designs for example). At least this makes sense in a Google world.

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