Google, Microsoft Mapping Software Gets Real


By Chloe Albanesius and Davis D. Janowski
Google and Microsoft returned from the holiday weekend poised to battle it out on the mapping front with updates that utilize 3-D and 360-degree virtual tour technology.

Microsoft kicked things off Tuesday with Live Search Maps, a 3-D rendering of New York City and eight other cities. The service provides detailed, street-by-street recreations of the Big Apple, Austin; Cape Coral, Fla.; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Northampton, England; Ottawa, Canada; Savannah; and Tampa.

Users can float atop these cities or drill down to street level for a computer-generated image of a certain neighborhood and scroll along block-by-block. Live Search also provides the traditional driving directions, Yellow Pages listsings, and 2-D aerial shots.

The software giant is pushing the service as a virtual tour guide of sorts. Short on cash or vacation time? Agoraphobic? Buzz around the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Central Park and Wall Street with the click of a mouse.


Live Search is not for those plugging along with an older system and a dial-up connection. As with rival system Google Earth, Live Search requires a download that can stress a PC's virtual memory.

Meanwhile, Google rained on Microsoft's mapping parade Tuesday by announcing updates to its Google Maps function that will allow for users to view certain addresses from a "street view" perspective.

Street views will first be available for San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami but will soon expand to other major cities, according to Google.

Google will also add "Mapplets", which will allow third party developers to add information like housing listings, crime data, and tools like distance measurement, and users can choose the information they want displayed. Google partners like WeatherBug, Booking.com and Platial have already created Mapplets, Google said.

Users type in an address as usual, but are given a "street view" option atop the map results on the right-hand side. They can then drag a small, orange icon up and down designated streets to see a photo of the area in which the icon lands. Small side streets are not yet included in the database, but most main avenues and streets in Manhattan, for example, are currently available.

The street view photos are quite detailed and resemble the 360 "virtual tour" function found on some real estate web sites. Google said that the pictures will be useful for checking out a restaurant or street and transit signs for information. While it is fairly easy to pick out more well known storefronts like McDonald's or Starbucks, most retail and building signage for New York City and Las Vegas addresses appear to be slightly blurry, though San Francisco is a bit clearer.

Google's "Street View" does not require an additional download.

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