Google Maps & Their API's

Recently I've been playing around with the Google Maps API's, its a really cool system that you can add on your website at no cost - you can mark where your offices are on the map, and users can see the address, zoom in and out, etc....

I have a thought tho, lets say you have a restaurent - In the UK most of the restaurents are all bunched together - if someone came to my site, and I owned a restaurent, I wouldn't be happy if they clicked the Map button, and saw adverts for 10 other restaurents (Google says they reserve the right to advertise on the maps).

Mapping firm Multimap.com, offer Business services, where they charge (like £1400) per year, and you have 100,000 impressions, i.e. your map can be viewed 100,000 times. If google were to do a similar thing, were, you paid to have NO ADVERTS, i.e. £0.01p per impression (with a daily-budget, etc... just like Adwords), then this would be a serious contender for businesses.

What do you think?

MSN droped some pages...

MSN dropped some of my pages completely from its index, and a couple of different pages just don't rank. The only measurable thing I've done is like to a domain I was selling on SEDO.

Odd - Has anyone else seen this effect?

Google's Future Moves...

In SF, Google is testing its free WIFI service - I've not used it, but I'm going to make an educated guess that they are slinging ads somewhere-somehow (splitting pages using frames or something similar).

Well - theres one major difference between, Business in America and Business in Europe - In Europe everything is extra, and I mean EVERYTHING.

On my travels to the US, personal and business, only once have I paid to use wireless internet in a hotel - It's free almost everywhere, at almost every hotel, free wireless internet is standard.

Travelling to Europe; I've NEVER got free internet access - Swisscom and Meteor Networks hold the vast majority of the Wireless Internet market (in Hotels). If I'm there for a day, it'll cost me £10, if I'm there for a week, I costs £90. Its expensive, but its a neccesity -- (BTW: Wifi Trick: If your staying in a hotel using Swisscom WIFI services, they say that you can only use one computer (or device) per paid internet connection - well, if you use the Wireless Bridge that they supply in the rooms, you can plug the bridge into any computer, and it works perfectly.)

Eventually, WIFI will become free in Europe, one major brand (like Hilton, Marriot, NH(My personal favourite) or another brand) will offer it free, and slowly, the others will follow.

Getting back to the point, I think Google will probably buy one of the major European WIFI services and run a WIFI service that adds a frame at the top of the page (probably 2cm in depth) and this will display ads. They already have many offices in Europe, including Germany, France, Ireland, England, etc... What do I say: "Good luck to you...".