Verify if a point is Land or Water in Google Maps

Question

..and then Google-maps \"divide the waters from the waters\"

Well, not in the biblical sense but..

I would like to know what options I have in order to verif

Answer 1

Unfortunately this answer isn't within the Google Maps API and the referenced resource is not free, but there's a web service provided by DynamicGeometry that exposes an operation GetWaterOrLand which accepts a latitude/longitude pair (you can see a demo here).

My understanding of how this is implemented is by using water body shape files. How exactly these shape files are used with the Google Maps API, but you might be able to get some insight from the linked demo.

Hope that helps in some way.