Free Mapping Site to Be Overhauled

A new mapping site on MSN will combine detailed street maps, satellite and aerial photographs, search functionality, and user annotations. Available in beta in summer 2005, MSN Virtual Earth will be a major improvement over MSN’s current mapping site, and it will place competitive pressure on mapping sites such as MapQuest and Google Maps. However, the existence of a free service with so much functionality could reduce demand for Streets and Trips, Microsoft’s desktop mapping application for consumers.

Satellite and Aerial Photos

MSN Virtual Earth will eventually replace the current MSN Maps site and will include the following improvements over that site:

Photographic images. Virtual Earth will offer satellite photographs from Microsoft’s TerraServer, a project that Microsoft Research created in 1998 to show how SQL Server can store large amounts of visual and geographic data. Virtual Earth users can also view a street map superimposed on the satellite map. In contrast, Google Maps, which added satellite photographs in spring 2005 based on its Oct. 2004 acquisition of Keyhole, forces users to toggle back and forth between images.