Every now and again I want to hate Google because everyone loves Google and who can imagine life without Google? But I love Google too, so this whole hating thing is very hard indeed. Especially when they come up with something like Google Transit.

And listen to the way they butter us up!

We chose to launch with the Portland metro area for a couple of reasons. TriMet, Portland's transit authority, is a technological leader in public transportation. The team at TriMet is a group of tremendously passionate people dedicated to serving their community. And TriMet has a wealth of data readily available that they were eager to share with us for this project. This combination of great people and great data made TriMet the ideal partner.

It's not as intuitive as I'd like—my first couple tries brought up nada—but damn, once you get it, it's great. It gives you transit times, walking directions, even the cost of taking transit vs driving!