Google slipped out a new feature in its Maps Data API over the holidays that was quiet but I think was fairly substantial.  If you recall, back in April, Google released a new API, designed for geographic data.  This original release included only a few features: the ability to store and manage spatial data and the ability to search it. A major limitation was that, despite being designed for storing spatial data, it didn’t support spatial searches.   With the latest version of the API, that’s now changed.

This is still a fairly limited capability, with only bounding box (rectangle) and point-plus-radius (circle) searches currently supported.  However, the ability to sort based on distance in combination with the spatial data services would be enough for many of the most straightforward mapping applications.