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MSN Virtual Earth Revealed
jeremyw writes "A day before its official launch, MSN Virtual Earth has gone live. MSN appears to have been inspired by Google Maps in this combination of local search and mapping. Virtual Earth introduces a number of interface enhancements to the now-familiar draggable aerial web map, such as the ability to zoom in using your mouse scroll wheel, and a Location Finder to determine your location to determine your real-world location "using Wi-Fi technology." Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday."
I hope Microsoft has their virtual earth rotating in the right direction this time.
I tried to link to the original Knowledge Base entry for this, alas, it doesn't seem to be there any more.
At least for international areas, the maps don't seem to be as detailed as google's.
Also, the interface doesn't seem to be reactive to me, might be slashdotted, but at least with google you can see it's doing something.
I guess it's a bit early, should probably check again in a few days.
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NBC made that goof in the early '80s. They had a rotating earth in the intro sequence for their evening news broadcast, except it was rotating the wrong way. It was left this way for quite some time, too.
Would you prefer that google had no competition? Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement, after all.
I think it's rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It's perfectly possible to take someone else's idea, improve upon it, and produce a superior product. After all, they've just done most of the hard work and expensive R&D for you.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Ironically, a few years ago, I put up some satellite photos of my house in Colorado ... and the Virtual Earth has the same ones clearly showing the drought of 2002 with a bunch of brown grass - not realistic to expect real-time imagery, but I'm surprised not a more recent pass.
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Now, why was this parent moded troll? I think it is a very valid point, only spoken in an ironic tone of voice. MS is again showing that they get their best ideas by copying from their competitors. I think everyone would agree that this company has been doing this since they licensed the look and feel their basic OS from Apple back in the 80's.
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If you look at the Aerial Photos of MSN Virtual Earth, you'll notice it has the Google Maps hybrid functionality.
Now I bet that Microsoft was the first to do this, and that Google somehow knew about it beforehand and implemented before MSN Virtual Earth became public.
Maybe Google employs some spies in Microsoft!
Click on "See your location on the map." A window appears over the map with choices on how to locate yourself (why would I not know where I am?) Click on the upper right X to close the window ... nothing.
The scroll wheel zoom is a little disconcerting. It zooms the current zoom level's map, and then redraws the map at the ending zoom level.
Pretty fast but some of the images don't load consistently.
The white text outlines in Google are easier to read. And Microsoft seems to over-label things.
Google
MS
It is really annoying, that zooming is done differently: google: wheel down: zoom in ms: wheel down: zoom out But this is an old problem with any CAD software. Which metaphor is used ? Are you pulling an object towards yourself (above: google like moving earth towards yourself) or are you moving yourself towards an object (above: ms like moving yourself towards earth). (BTW, pesonal note: I prefer the "wheel down=zoom in" and use this in our 3D surgical planning software for dental implantology, www.med3D.com)
The reason it's broken is it's a java applet or something on non IE machines. If you right click, you don't get any menu at all. It's also in frames because I was typing in a search and it refreshed the window deleting my query string when the map finished displaying.
I also noticed the alpha channel on the left bar. IE doesn't support alpha without hacks for png so I highly doubt it's straight html too.
Google just uses straight html. It works well. It's faster to scroll and zoom and it can find my house.
The only thing they "copied" was the dragability.
Um, they copied a lot more than that. They copied resizing the map window to fill up the browser window.They copied the general color scheme. They copied the ability to switch between street maps and aerial photos. They copied DHTML layering to show point data on top of the maps. They copied the entire design for searching, navigating, and finding points-of-interest. And they copied it so closely, they made it cross-browser functional (you can damn well bet if Google Maps didn't exist as a cross-browser functional product, MSN VE would only work on IE).
And they copied the most innovative part of Google maps - tile-based pre-built raster images to assemble dynamic maps. As someone who has developed GIS applications, I can tell you, while this may sound trivial, it is not. Google thought outside the box. The GIS community for years has used vector data to produce one raster image on-the-fly at runtime (like Mapquest). Instead, Google creates small tiled images at every zoom-level they offer and stores them on the server, and thus can produce a map at any location and any zoom-level, and offer it with "dragability". This is a completely new paradigm for interactive GIS apps. The old way does offer some advantages over the new way, but for web-based interactive GIS, the new way is pretty phenominal.
While the rest of the GIS community was happily working to make incremental improvements to the old paradigm, Google innovated a new paradigm. MSN just copied it. There's nothing wrong with copying (well, until the USPTO grants software patents), but don't mistake it for anything other than what it is.
They copied the ability to switch between street maps and aerial photos
...
This site has been available internally at Microsoft for a month or two now. It contained several features that google maps didn't have at the time (the most significant being able to view satelite data w/strees overlayed). Interestingly enough, two weeks after the interal beta, many of those features appeared on Google maps
While I'm certain that Google maps provided a certain level of "inspiration" for Microsoft, I wouldn't dismiss it as simple blind copying.
Well no one can argue that the Google Satellite data is better, but you can't really credit Google "innovation" for that, keyhole gathered the data and they just bought them. Microsoft seems to have better mapping data from my experience, Google has some absolutely horrendous path finding...it quoted me a 23 hour drive from Baltimore to New Orleans...taking a route 6 fucking hours longer then Microsoft found. Google consistently fails at meeting Mapquest and Microsoft in any kind of long term directions finding.
dragability that's *fast*
This is certainly a matter of opinion or location i suppose, it seems just as fast to me
Google's incarnation functions like a finished piece of software (while still carrying the 'beta' tag)
Google maps didn't even have a bloody scale bar until last week, which is the most basic element of a map....Google has given me dangerously bad directions, and as mentioned above, horribly inefficient ones too. Google can't find things that are on it shows on it's map (Solomons Island, MD, Reagan National Airport).
Neither solutions are perfect, i'm just a little sick of the damn Google fan boys here.
hey copied resizing the map window to fill up the browser window.They copied the general color scheme.
No doubt this is an answer to Google maps, but the things you list as copying are more like just "keeping up with the times". When Volvo first put seatbelts in it's cars standard, was GM copying this when they added it to theirs? When Mercedes put a Navagation system in their car and adaptive cruise control, did Lexus copy these? Or were they cool ideas that obviously a competitor would need to integrate and improve on? Does Google integrate traffic information in their maps like Microsoft and Yahoo maps? Microsoft told me a major road would be closed for repairs, Google told me to enjoy the road. Microsoft has been giving travel directions for most of western europe and a large portion of south america and asia for years, google only has North america, Japan and UK. Was Google copying microsoft by adding directions here? If Google adds traffic info, I'm sure everyone here will claim its some revolutionary new invention too.
This is a completely new paradigm for interactive GIS apps.
It's interesting you bring up the GIS applications, I actually have a degree in GIS and I can tell you that Google invented nothing new here. They are still using vector data with raster overlays. Their application of using AJAX to do it is the only novel thing about it. For instance have you ever used Microsoft streets and trips? You can drag to your hearts content on maps with that for the last 10 years.
They copied DHTML layering to show point data on top of the maps.
Both mapquest and Microsoft had this before Google btw, Google only made it look cooler using transpancies.
Yes, Microsoft innovates on existing idea and doesn't really invent anything new. News flash, that is EXACTLY Google's business plan as well. Get used to the fact that neither company will come up with an original idea, but simply better existing ideas.
BBC News made the same goof when they launched their TOG system in 2003 - small globe in the background behind teh clock at the left of the lower-third of the screen.