Speaking of Jason Dowdell, he’d be all over this news story from InfoWorld (yes Jason, you are a search geek…it’s OK, embrace it).

Jon Udell peels back the outer-layer of Google Maps and reveals the technology behind the newly launched map service.

As is the tradition when Google launches a new service, curious hackers immediately took Google Maps apart to see how the magic was done. The best early analysis came from Joel Webber, who worked out the details of image tiling, dynamic updating, and route plotting (infoworld.com/2533). Among other interesting discoveries, he found that the application uses the browser’s built-in XSLT engine to transform packets of XML received from the server into search results, displayed as HTML.

So why no compatibility with Apple Macs?. According to Udell, “this explains why Google Maps supports only Internet Explorer or Mozilla-based browsers. The others, notably Safari and Opera, lack built-in XSLT processors.”

Enough about the technology behind it, what is more important, is the impact this will have on the popularity of MapQuest. I showed Google Maps to my wife, just once last week, and she’s already using it instead of MapQuest. I predict many will make the switch.

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.