The right move by Google?

14th April 2007

Google have announced that there are going to start presenting house sale information on maps as search results.

With recent announcements on Google Base and Google mymaps, they are starting to put together an interesting portfolio to attack online property sales. This is what you get if you search for property in the US now (via Gesterling).

Remind you of anything?

It’s free and it’s Google. If you’ve got a startup based on aggregating search results this has got to be bad news. Especially if search delivers a big slug of your traffic. Whilst a Google search will obviously miss some of the subtleties of a dedicated vertical search engine, it looks like it does most of the job.

It’s a bit like what happened to Kiko. They built a web based calendar, only to find it blown out of the water by Google Calendar.

The worry for the nestorias, zillows and extates of the world is that before they have a chance to disintermediate estate agents, they find that Google disintermediates them. Compete differently is one suggested option. Run and hide might be another. For now, this service is only available in the US.

As for Blockhunter (which is based on the Google Maps API anyway) it’s another interesting indirect challenge. But this move proves that there’s lots of innovation in a space that has been static for a long time.