How to display Google Maps as basemap in a Silverlight application?

Remember Trying to Get Google Maps into Silverlight? What a Headache!

Okay, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Remember Silverlight? For a while there, it was Microsoft’s big answer to Flash, and some of us actually tried building real applications with it. One thing many developers wanted to do was embed Google Maps. Sounds simple, right? Not so fast! Getting Google Maps to play nice as a basemap in a Silverlight application turned out to be way more complicated than it should have been. And honestly, looking back, it feels like a bit of a relic from a bygone era, especially since Microsoft pulled the plug on Silverlight support back on October 12, 2021. Even before that, Chrome and Firefox had already given it the boot.

The Tech Stuff: A Real Puzzle

So, what made it so tricky? Well, Silverlight, being Microsoft’s framework for those “rich internet applications” we were all chasing, just didn’t have built-in support for Google Maps the way you might expect. You couldn’t just drop it in.

One workaround involved using Silverlight’s WebBrowser control to kind of “trick” it. Basically, you’d embed a webpage running the Google Maps JavaScript API inside your Silverlight app. Clunky, right? It worked, sort of, but it wasn’t exactly the smooth, native experience you were hoping for. Performance often took a hit, and it just felt… inelegant.

Then there was the ArcGIS API for Silverlight route. Some brave souls tried extending the TiledMapServiceLayer class, creating a custom layer to fetch those Google Maps tiles directly. Ambitious? Definitely. Problematic? You bet.

The Legal Landmine

Here’s where things got really interesting (and by “interesting,” I mean “potentially lawsuit-inducing”). Google’s terms of service were pretty clear: you couldn’t just grab their map tiles and use them outside of their approved API. So, all those clever hacks to directly access the tiles? Big no-no. You risked violating their terms, which is never a good place to be. I remember spending hours reading through those terms, trying to find a loophole. Spoiler alert: there wasn’t one.

What Else Could You Do?

Faced with these headaches, many of us started looking at alternatives. Bing Maps, being a Microsoft product, had a Silverlight control that integrated much more easily. It wasn’t Google Maps, but it was a whole lot less trouble. Or you could explore other tile providers. Honestly, though, it often felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Lessons Learned

These days, it’s all about HTML5, JavaScript, and mapping libraries like Leaflet or Mapbox GL JS. They’re more flexible, faster, and work across all the modern browsers. Trying to shoehorn Google Maps into Silverlight feels like ancient history. But you know what? It taught us a few things. It highlighted the importance of understanding API usage rights and showed us how crucial it is to stay current with the ever-changing tech landscape. So, while we might not be building Silverlight apps anymore, those lessons still stick with me.