Preface

A few years ago, using maps on the Web was hard. The maps were ugly, slow to load, and burdened with a clunky user interfaceand if you think using maps on the Web was hard, imagine trying to make useful and interesting maps on the Web! Today, however, all that has changed. A good measure of the credit for this quantum leap in digital cartography on the Internet is due to Google and their Google Maps service. How did this come about?