Google has announced the launch of the Google Maps Engine API, which lets developers use Maps Engine in their own apps for the first time.

Last year, Google relaunched Google Earth Builder as Google Maps Engine.

“Maps Engine lets organizations use Google’s fast and reliable cloud infrastructure to layer their data on top of a Google Map and share their custom-made Google Maps with employees, customers or the public-at-large,” a Google spokesperson said in an email. “The API provides direct access to Maps Engine for reading and editing spatial data hosted in the cloud and now organizations can use the API to develop on any platform and build applications like store locators, crowdsourced maps or crisis-response maps.”

“With the API, organizations can develop on any platform – web, Android, iOS and server-to-server – and build applications like store locators, crowdsourced maps or crisis-response maps,” says Google Maps for Business product manager Jen Kovnats. “For example, FedEx.com uses the API to query its more than 50,000 retail locations and IRIS creates applications for utilities to track underground pipelines.”

“Using Google Maps, and more specifically Google Maps Engine, allowed us to completely re-imagine FedEx.com,” says FedEx IT Manager Pat Doyle. “We turned to Maps Engine because it gave us a powerful platform to build and share our own FedEx maps. By integrating features that so many people use everyday, like Google Street View and driving directions, FedEx.com visitors can easily find the nearest FedEx.”

A developer’s guide for the API is available here.