TomTom Enters Online Mapping

TomTom, known for its popular GPS, has launched an online mapping solution.

TomTom Route Planner is free and allows door-to-door directions to be mapped for the US and Canada. Of interest to the real estate industry is that it will compete with MapQuest and Google Maps. Some property portals already supply driving directions to properties, in addition to map based search.

The online maps are currently in beta but already have the benefit of TomTom’s live traffic information, smart routing, and “Map Share” daily improvements to accuracy.

In a statement about the Route Planner’s launch, Harold Goddijn, TomTom’s chief executive officer said: “The introduction of the online Route Planner marks an important step in our strategy to make our award-winning navigation available for all users, regardless of the platform that is used. Users who do not have a navigation device can now also benefit from our high-quality routing”.

Depending on the success and feedback from the beta programme, the TomTom online Route Planner will gradually be rolled out to users worldwide.

Only last week propertyportalwatch.com reported on the area of online mapping hotting up, with redfin.com choosing Google Maps over Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Meanwhile Google is facing further trouble with its popular but controversial Street View application. A group of Japanese lawyers and professors have asked Google to close down its Street View feature of Google Maps in the country.

redfin.com Switches from Microsoft to Google

Online real estate broker redfin.com has released a new version of their website.

The updates include tweaks like making the neighbourhood pages more discoverable.

One of the biggest changes is the maps. They have made the decision to stop using Microsoft Virtual Earth, and have switched to Google Maps.



On the corporate blog the company says:

“We decided to do this now because our two-year contract with Microsoft was up for renewal. We did an evaluation and figured out a way to draw a large number of pushpins on GMaps very quickly. When we went with VE in 2006, GMaps was faster out of the box but slower once we started drawing on it, especially on IE6.”

“We really only have good things to say about VE. Anyone looking to build a map-based Web 2.0 site has two solid choices.”

“In the end, it was speed, speed, speed that convinced us to switch. In our worst case scenario of 500 pushpins on the map in IE6, GMaps is 385% faster.”

With maps now an integral feature of the property search experience, property portals have a choice between several providers – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, MapQuest, and more.

The Future of Real Estate Marketing blog did a quick analysis of the Hitwise top real estate websites and found that four of them use Virtual Earth (realtor.com, zillow.com, ziprealty.com and realtytrac.com), compared to three using Google (trulia.com, homegain.com and remax.com). Yahoo! Real Estate was the only one using Yahoo! maps, and rent.com uses MapQuest.

redfin.com also says a more major release is in the pipeline from the company early next year, so stay tuned.