Seeing Forests

Following a tweet from Greg, and Sebastien, and now the post on Read/Write Web, I went to the Google built-in browser on the Nexus One to try out Google’s “Near Me Now”.  I don’t quite get why Marshall at RW says this doesn’t bode well for the likes of Yelp and NextStop (can someone say, Local Guides?).  The site is pretty pedestrian; the production values pretty plain.  Of course, if you’ve read Google’s PlaceRank patent, you’d be expecting this.  They’re providing a list of most popular categories for canned searches that drive to result pages with links to their Place Pages.  Got to tell you, though, results are quite good and I’ve always liked their Place Pages so if all you ever want is what everyone else always wants, you’re in good shape here.  I can’t help but believe that there’s still more to answering the question to what’s “Near Me Now” than what’s behind a list of Google-blue international standard icons for restaurants, lodging, and shopping.

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