Google Maps the World :)

Google has released Google Maps (beta) today.

This is a competing product to mapquest, which allows you to get driving directions, map any location and lookup any businesses in the area (eg. local pizza places) amoung other things.

I have to say I am very impressed by this product; the GUI is absolutely amazing and equally important, it is very fast (ie. doesn't refresh the page each change you make) . The map feature on the page is a really good idea and seems to be done with DHTML: impressive! The product is also very well integrated with search and has tons of good features.

It seems to be a bit buggy for now: so not always reliable for fastest directions, but I can't wait until its been around for a while and most bugs have been fixed.

Update: Here is a good link to find out some details on how the whole thing is done in DHTML