Microsoft Releases Large Volume Of New Images For Maps

Virtual Earth, which has been somewhat in the shadow of Google Maps and Earth released a large volume of new images for Live Search Maps for a range of countries and cities around the globe.

The imagery allows you to get in very close, so you can see how far your hotel is exactly from the beach in Cannes, for example:

Live Search Maps has not received as much attention as Google Maps but the site has improved greatly over time in terms of usability and accuracy. It’s also much faster than before.

Both Google and Microsoft offer satellite imagery, which is often not that useful to ordinary people in practical situations. Google has StreetView, which can be extremely useful in a range of cases. But Google has nothing between the overhead satellite view and StreetView. Microsoft, despite rumors, doesn’t have a street-level offering (it will over the long term, perhaps through an acquisition) but it does offer a “Birds Eye” view, which as you see in the bottom two images above is much more helpful than satellite imagery.