Re:Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
by metamemetics on Sunday September 05, 2010 @05:29PM
(#1665222)
User interface is far more important. The majority of use cases were people looking for directions to places in non-satellite view.
Google maps was the first one where you could simply drag a fullscreen map around with your mouse and zoom with mouse wheel.
I suspect it wasn't until after this user interface enhancement that people even bothered exploring satellite views much.
Consistency is one of the reasons why the maps are no longer horrible.