This is freaking huge news!
According to Google’s Lat Long Blog:
“In part due to low usage, the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites, and the infrastructure challenge posed by the impending retirement of the Google Base API (used by listing providers to submit listings), we’ve decided to discontinue the real estate feature within Google Maps on February 10, 2011.”
1. No longer integrated on Google maps
2. No longer accepting data feeds
Read the whole post here:
All I can say is WOW!
Greg, Maybe a reflection of the great job real estate search sites like Trulia, realtor.com and zillow are doing in providing consumers what they really want?
@Lloyd Agreed. But the big winner here is Realtor.com. They, with their acquisition of Listhub, control the a majority of the inventory of sites like Trulia and Zillow.
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Could the real big winner here be RPR? They are well on their way…..
@Warren I don’t see why. RPR isn’t in the “public display of listings” game.
Or is there another shoe yet to drop? To those of you that track the Google blog, is this trustworthy?
Google will still be indexing (copying and storing) all of the data, but no longer needs to manage and support Google Base to aggregate the data – they can get it all for free by copying it from Realtor.com – which has the most comprehensive, indexable data set updated anywhere from every 15 minutes to daily.
Gotta hand it to the Google team – if robots can collect and sort the data – why use people and process.
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Meh. Seems like some over-reaction in the RE press on this announcement. Google is removing the (buried) real estate link from the maps GUI. No traffic = no revenue. This comes from GOOG’s earning’s call last week where they said drop the experiments and products that aren’t driving revenue.
I don’t think that means they are getting out of real estate. They have better ways of doing it instead of using the old, and now discontinued, Base API. I agree with Kevin that this feels like a signal of things to come. The calm before the storm.
RE Search will continue to be strong for Google and it’s driving revenue. When Google’s 6000 new hires come on board over the next 12 months, at least a few of them will introduce a better way to monetize the RE data. Mobile, for sure and I can think of a few other things that might work, too.
On another note, it’s ok to use: /sarcasm when making comments. (Warren, I’m talking to you.) /sarcasm
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When a consumer uses a search engine don’t they search for RE sites, not properties themselves? I just went thru the buying process (yes, I’m not the average consumer) and went to R.com first, then to my broker site and then googled things like “real estate wellington fl” and then visited other RE sites. The only time I used Google was to see the property on a map. I just don’t see consumers using Google as a true RE search when there are awesome sites out there with much better search.
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New York State’s reators won’t be able to survive without Google Maps real estate searches. Personaly, I’m disapointed(pissed)!. Actually, I’ve decided to rid my entire computer of ALL Google’s products because of this. If they don’t care, niether do I! F@$#-off Google!
Yeah, Google left the real estate business. The MLS systems are just too regional, and I believe that Google thought that it would have a battle on its hands. In the long run…
I guess they just felt that it wasn’t in their best interests…now, there is just google Real Estate
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