Google the copycat? or innovator?

I just read another blog entry where someone called Google a copycat. And to some extent we should agree with that.

However (and a big one at that), its not so much whether you are first, second or even third to market, its the quality of your offering and buzz you’re a
ble to create around it.

Google is the media machine and it could come dead last to market with a service and still build substantial market share.

I haven’t played with maps.google.com too much yet but suffice to say it looks very clean and fairly polished. It lo
oked up my address in Canada accurately which is a bonus. The next time I need to look up an address I may just try out their maps service instead of mapq
uest.

It’ll be interesting to see where they go with this. It’d be nice for them to integrate it into gmail and allow me to easily lookup and get directions to
addresses in my emails.

Innovator or copycat, keep on creating good services and you’ll keep me happy.