Fusion Tables files were private, unlisted or public, as specified by the user and followed the convention established by other Google Docs apps.

The join would extract the districts relevant to the Illinois elections, and the result would be easy to put on a map and embed in a news article or other website.

The UI supported adding rows and editing data, which was also possible programmatically through the Fusion Tables API.

Data types supported within the table view included standard strings, numbers but also images and KML.

By providing a way to ingest, manage, merge and style larger quantities of data, Fusion Tables facilitated a blossoming of geographic story-telling.

An HTML subset templating language supported customizable card layout and map infowindows displaying static and data field content.

By supporting simple queries, embeddable HTML snippets for visualizations, and a simple HTML templating language for customizing layouts, Fusion Tables straddled the point-n-click world and the production software engineering world with a 'scriptable' functionality that allowed many data owners with limited software development time or expertise to develop highly custom, expressive websites and tools with their data.

Maps created in Fusion Tables could be exported to KML and viewed in Google Earth, making Fusion Tables an important authoring tool for many of the non-profits and NGOs working closely with Google Earth Outreach to spread information about their work.

The website launched as part of Google Labs in June 2009, announced by Alon Halevy and Rebecca Shapley.

[5] Additionally, some smarts were applied to detect data columns that described locations (like addresses) and to send them to Google's Geocoding service so they could be rendered on the map.

Prior to the FusionTablesLayer, map pins were rendered on top of basemap tiles in the browser client.

The Fusion Tables SQL API supported sending filter queries to the FusionTablesLayer to dynamically adjust the data shown on the map.

[7] Fusion Tables offered a readily accessible solution for working with data on a map that previously required clunky and expensive desktop software.

In October 2010, FusionTables demonstrated reliability under heavy traffic spikes when hosting the map visualization of the Iraqi War Deaths data set embedded in a news article from The Guardian.

Shortly after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, crisis responders used Fusion Tables to reflect road status and shelters with close-to-realtime updates.

Merging tables was, for example, a great way to use publicly available authoritative KML boundaries for places many people might have data about, such as counties or electoral districts.