Today I struggled with the following: $.ajax({url:'http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/jsonaddress=Karachi&sensor=false&output=json&callback=?', dataType: 'json', success: function(data){ //eval("("+data+")"); alert(data); } }); Firefox gives the error "Invalid Label" and Chrome "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token :". I found a lot of posts about this, and I tried all kinds of things like eval(), but also: $.getJSON('http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/jsonaddress=Karachi&sensor=false&output=json&callback=?', function(data){ //eval("("+data+")"); alert(data); } ); Same result. Also, other json data works fine, for instance flickr ("http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cat&tagmode=any&format=json&jsoncallback=?). So it has something to do with the Google Maps API output i guess.. Thanks in advance.