Google keeps expanding the features of its Google Maps API, yet there's no shortage of things developers wish Google added. We know this because there is a public repository of issues. While some may be bugs, most are enhancements, desired additions to the web's most popular API.
There were a number of Google Maps announcements at I/O, including transit directions available in the Google Directions API. That feature had been on Google's radar since at least September, 2008, when it was first added to the issue tracker. Since Google allows developers to "star" issues as a means of voting for it, we know that transit was the highest unimplemented feature request.
What's on top of the request heap now?
A look into the issue list may tell us what's coming next, or at the very least what developers really want.
- Clickable transit markers -- bus and train stops provide stop times in the flagship Google Maps. Developers want the option for the same in the API.
- Automatic geography shapes -- these enable the shaded choropleth maps where countries, counties or other regions are plotted as different colored shapes, often clickable.
- Delete-able vertices in drawing library -- letting users draw on your map is still a new feature, but devs want an undo option
- Wikipedia Layer -- this is one of those features from Google Maps v2 that has not yet made it to v3.
- Polyline access to directions in JavaScript -- when using the directions renderer, developers want access to the underlying data.
- Z-index for KML -- if you're adding a lot of layers, you pretty quickly want to decide the order of the layers.
- De-clutter markers that are close together -- like the choropleths, this is a perennial desire from developers that is still not in Google Maps proper.
There's also a list of things Google won't fix. At the top: direct access to the tiles.
Everything else on the non-Won't Fix list may very well be coming in future releases. After all, when Google released styled maps it planted itself firmly as a serious Platform for mapping. Perhaps that's why Google Maps now costs money above 25,000 map views per day.
Anti-Google? There are ways to style maps without Google and a lot of Google Maps alternatives.
