Maps: Google or Microsoft
posted by: Vlad AkilovMany people know about google maps, along with google earth, but some of us don’t really know that their are other alternatives for maps, for instance there is map quest, yahoo maps, but the biggest competition for google is most likely going to be from Microsoft. They recently made a map service called local.live.com The location I chose to compare is the Empire State Building in NYC, on 5 ave. and 34st. Detail Both Google and Local Live provide aerial satellite images, however only Local Live provides a birds eye view of the images, which is taken at an angle as opposed to Google that is just taken from above.
Detail
Both Google and Local Live provide aerial satellite images, however only Local Live provides a birds eye view of the images, which is taken at an angle as opposed to Google that is just taken from above.
Google Maps
Local.live.com
Local.live.com even more closer
Standard map view
Both of these services not only provide aerial satellite images, but also show the plain map view with roads and street names.
Google Maps
Local.live.com
Something that both Google Maps and Live.local.com lack is the feature to display traffic reports live, which yahoo maps beta does quite well.
Yahoo Maps beta
Final Thoughts
I think that these services are all great for the consumer basically because they are all for free. However some services do better than others. For example with the detail Microsoft beats Google with their Birds eye view feature, however this feature does not work with all cities and countries, it’s only good for the major cities in the US and parts of Europe. Moreover google maps is better at the plain view map because of their detail to show all the names of streets, roads, etc. Also google provides a program called Google Earth, for free which microsoft doesn’t yet have. But one thing both of these services lack that I mentioned is the feature to display live traffic reports.
In the end if one program or service doesn’t come out to your satisfaction there are always many other programs out there for the end user, all for free so if one service doesnt show a good image go to the next.
