MSN VS. Google: Searching Earth

Bill Gates announced the launch of MSN's Virtual Earth mapping tool yesterday in a continuing effort to expand its MSN product line as part of the ongoing battle with Yahoo and Google to capture the search engine services market.

WebProWorld Gates made the announcement at the Wall Street Journal conference in Carlsbad, California and had a full visual presentation for the media to view. Microsoft showed off the wonderful images of places all over the country as Gates' air corps of high quality digital photographry planes sent back pictures to help people look over their city with a literal bird's eye view. Now we know the what U.S. Air Force did with all their SR71 Blackbirds. Actually, Microsoft covers 15 major cities with high quality photos from Pictometry's fleet of small planes taken at a 45-degree angle. They then overlay the photos onto satellite imagery and allows people to see clear photos of whatever they happen to be looking for with highly detailed maps to get them there. What Others Are Doing: search engine called A9 last at the beginning of 2005. The Block View, as they call it, brings up matching photos when one begins looking for things, particularly cities. A9 utlizes photo trucks equipped with GPS for their imagery with the notion of having the user feel like they were riding with them in the truck. When typing in the home office city of Lexington, Kentucky, no Ashley Judd photos came up though. Right now, Google offers a free mapping service called system but it lacks the quality photography and the detail of the satellite imagery to work with. One can see where restaurants and gas stations are located but it's like any standard map. With the new mapping systems, you REALLY get to see where they are. Yahoo's system isn't bad but it doesn't give the detail "You can really establish that what-is-it-like-there kind of feeling," Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's MapPoint business.said. "This is a game-changing kind of imagery for the Internet and for this kind of search experience we're trying to create." One of the major concerns with all this groovy new mapping technology and satellite imaging and high fidelity photography is privacy. With many technological enterprises, privacy protection seems to be an issue. Now instead of employees committing identity theft at the local bank, pictures of one walking with children or one's girlfriend will be out there. It's something for real consideration. John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.