I have store locator web service in which i'm using Google Map's HTTP request to get geocode information for given address. I'm not using Google's javascript object. I exposed a Webservice with one WebMethod that takes address as parameter. we pass that address to google as querystring using  .Net HTTPRequest object and get the HTTRreponse object. Once i get the Geocode information in Response object i pass it to StoredProc and do the remaining magic there. and finally we return the result to our client.

this is how my code look like

// build google URL here using given address, output and applicationid
// URL = http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA&output=csv&key=abcdefg
// pass this URL to GetWebResponse(string URL)

private string GetWebResponse(string URL)
{
 System.IO.StreamWriter wr = null;
 System.IO.StreamReader rd = null;
 try
 {
  HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(URL);
  System.Web.HttpContext context = System.Web.HttpContext.Current;
  request.Referer = context.Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_REFERER"];
  request.Method ="POST";
  request.ContentLength = URL.Length;
  wr = new System.IO.StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream());
  wr.Write(URL);   
  HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
  rd = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
  return rd.ReadToEnd();    
 }
 finally
 {
  if(wr != null)
   wr.Close();

  if(rd != null)
   rd.Close();
 }
}

this works fine. what i wanted to know is there any other alternate way to get back string without using HTTPRequest object & HTTPResponse object.
For example if i change output key to output=xml i'll get xml response from google and then i can use following code to read the response

XmlReader reader = new XmlTextReader(url);
XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
xDoc.Load(reader);

in this case xDoc will have response xml without creating HttpRequest & HttprResponse