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Review: MSN Virtual Earth

by Jeremy Wright on July 25th, 2005

Microsoft’s new “Google Maps killer” was released this morning: MSN Virtual Earth.

TDavid wrote a review while the site was up for performance testing which is quite good.

All in all, I’m going to try and cover some of the high points, some of the low points, and some of the reasons I believe this is a kickass app which totally whoops Google Maps in almost every way.

First Impressions Testing

What’s the first thing everyone does when loading a new maps tool? They look for where they live, of course!

Before I actually tested out either of the tools, I noticed Virtual Earth’s “Locate Me” link. So I clicked it. This gives you the option of either locating your current location based on IP address, OR of installing a tidbit of software which does it for you. I decided to do the latter, just to see what it had to offer. The short answer? Not much. Ultimately it still determined my location via my IP address, which lead it to think I am based in Saint John, which is about an hour away.

Google Maps: Finds St. Stephen, New Brunswick
MSN VE: Doesn’t. Which is odd, since it has all kinds of info on my town in it. Ah well. Town of 5000 in outback eastern Canada.

What it does find when I hit Locate Me and redirect to my actual town is not only more detailed, but also infinitely more useful than Google’s view.

Google Maps: Doesn’t have aerial data, barely knows place exists.
Virtual Earth: Not only finds it, but has a great picture AND overlays street details.

At this point, a few initial thoughts and reactions.

First, MSN’s Virtual Earth is 10 times easier to use than Google Maps. Between the little compass in VE that you can drag and it’ll just scroll with you (instead of Google Maps’ “click, drag, click, drag, click, drag”) and the ability to zoom much more easily in VE (you can scroll, you can hit the +/- keys on your keyboard OR you can double click), this is an app that is much more thought out.

Also, the interface for VE is 10 times better. Sure, it’s more “MSN” graphicky, but I also get to see thousands of pixels of more maps. In fact, it makes Google Maps look almost silly in comparison. There is just a hell of a lot more map space in Virtual Earth, which is fantastic.

Next first impressions are that for first-time users, VE is much friendlier. The little Welcome pane is fantastic, as it provides a quick overview on how to use the service, instead of Google’s “drop you in and hope you swim” approach.

And, Virtual Earth’s “Options” pane is a much welcome addition in many ways. The first 10 minutes of using this app really shows me 3 things:

1. Much friendlier and easier to use interface
2. It needs to be more “non-US aware”
3. The photos are inc0nsistent: sometimes they’re way better than Google Maps, sometimes they’re way worse
4. Virtual Earth needs to “pull a Google”, and still show vector maps when there are no photos

Some Thoughts

One of the key things that Virtual Earth is doing is trying to “innovate”. I’m putting that in brackets because this is Microsoft and I don’t want folk to get distracted by me putting “innovate” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence. The hybrid map view where you get photos and vector maps is fantastic. Google released it last week, but they totally ripped it from VE (since VE had a video demo of this 3 months ago). Google will get the props for it, when VE had a working version demo’d months earlier.

Second, Virtual Earth’s “Label” system is fantastic. It’s US-only, but it shows you physical landmarks, major buildings, natural landmarks, parks, etc. Good stuff.

Features, Features, Features

Virtual Earth’s biggest selling point, right now anyways, is the ability to find the types of businesses you’re looking for. The multiple searches is great. The ability to wildcard search for any business in an area is great. The ability to save locations you like in a “Scratch Pad” is absolutely killer. Find the coffee shop you like, then find the movie theatre, then find the little Italian place, and even find parking.

Very cool.

Kicks GM’s ass here.

So far, the Locate Me, the Scratch Pad, and the interface are all awesomely better than Google Maps. The images are starting to piss me off (the lack of them in Canada, and the discrepancy: images are either AWESOME or crap, unlike Google in which they’re all just average).

TDavid notes some shortcomings of Virtual Earth. The biggest of which is that driving directions takes you away from VE.

What’s the Best Thing?

Massive, massive, massive developer community. API’s. Tutorials. Apps. This isn’t totally “big” yet, but expect it to be huge in about 2 weeks.

Final Thoughts

There’s a bit of a divide here between Google Maps / Earth and MSN Virtual Earth… Google Maps just plain has better overall imagery. Virtual Earth’s imagery is either great or awful, whereas Google Maps has maps for just about everywhere on earth, even if the map is way pixelated. At the same time, Virtual Earth is much easier to use from an “exploring” point of view. Hop off a plane, hit “Locate Me”, look for rental cars, then look for hotels, then look for somewhere to eat and then look for somewhere to catch a show. Boom, your whole day is planned and in your Scratch Pad.

My only real issue with the Scratch Pad is that I can’t print out a summary of it. That’d make it 100 times easier for me. 1000 times easier? Give me driving directions from one to the other.

As TDavid, and others, have noted this is a fantastic service which ultimately feels like with just a bit more tweaking it could kill every other map system out there. Google Maps really only did one thing: interactive maps. Virtual Earth takes this to the nth degree.

So the question is which is more important: better imagery or 10 times more useful search?

I’m going for search, what do you think?

Btw, here’s the Channel 9 video, and here are some other folks talking about this:

Chandu (one of the devs)
Introductory post on the team blog
Dennis Cheung
Evil Jim
Backup Brain
Dima Kitsov

Technorati tags: virtual earth

Oh, and here are some Flickr images up already about the service.

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POSTED IN: General, Reviews