Google Maps kills off real estate listings

Google has announced it will discontinue the real estate listings in Google Maps on February 10th, 2011. Real estate search was introduced in 2009, and it allowed users to look for property for rent or sale directly on Google Maps. The problem is that it never had the most complete or useful collection of listings, and competing real estate search sites passed it by while the Google Maps team was working on things like cycling directions and an awesome new Android client.

Google points out that other real estate listing providers can use Google Maps APIs, and that Google's local business listings and Street View are still powerful tools for anyone checking out a new neightborhood. There's also a hint that Google might compete in the housing listing space in the future. According to their blog post on the topic, "... there might be better, more effective ways to help people find local real estate information than the current feature makes possible. We'll continue to explore this area."

Tags: google, google maps, GoogleMaps, housing, maps, real estate, real estate listings, RealEstate, RealEstateListings, search, web