Integrating Bing Maps tiles into Google Maps API

Question

Hello,

I currently managed to integrate OpenStreetMap into Google Maps API as it is described in this example. I wonder if I can also integrate Bing Maps tiles into Google Maps API. Is it possible? I could not find anything about that.

Note: I do know about mapstraction but for now, I would like to stick to Google Maps API.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Based on the OpenStreetMap example that you cited, I would say that it's possible but it could be quite a challenge. I would strongly advise against it since the OSM example uses version 2 of the Google API and it now officially deprecated.

But if you want to give it a try I would adapt the OSM example to point to the Bing tiles and make sure that the tileUrlTemplate property matches Bing's format for storing tiles. Unfortunately, Bing uses a quad tree format while Google uses a coordinate based format for storing tiles and accessing them via a URL. It will be important to understand the differences if you're going to make the example work so be sure to dig into the documentation links above. Also, MapTiler has a fantastic visualization of the different tile formats out there. I've found this invaluable.

Personally, I would use OpenLayers. Since Bing and Google both use spherical mercator, adding multiple tile sources to a single map is a trivial exercise. Here is an example.