It’s only two months since Google introduced Google Maps to the USA, and yesterday they started to introduce it to the rest of the world, one country at a time. Happily for me (the first apostle of the church of Google) the UK was the first to benefit.

There are several features of Google Maps that make it very attractive. Firstly, Google have partnered with Yellow Pages, so if you happen to be in Pontardawe and want to find something as random as an engraving service, you can, and you immediately see where it’s located.

Anticipation: If Google Maps UK goes the same way as the USA version they’re working on introducing high resolution satellite images from their EarthViewer application, I’m guessing we’ll see that around the end of May 2005.

Feeding (and feeding off) the revenue of yell.co.uk is certainly a good start, but where Google stands to make a killing, is in the mobile market, which is very mature in the UK. Google Mobile, which is also in beta, combines the same business information, with knowledge of your mobile phone’s location to provide a search results that are automatically tailored to your location whilst on the move. You want fish and chips? Certainly, there are 3 nearby.

So Google have opened up another market in another country, tapped into the services already offered by that country’s businesses, and enhanced them by providing a faster, cleaner interface. Google stand to win in the mobile search market over existing small businesses and mobile service providers because their user interface is familiar, and critically, is so simple that it does not appear degraded or constrained by the small form factor of a mobile screen.