MSN Virtual Earth to Take on Google 408
Jim Bruer writes "Microsoft sends news today that founder Bill Gates has announced a MSN Virtual Earth service is to debut in the summer. The service is promised to provide:
*Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods
*Satellite images with street map overlays
* Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants
The service will allow users to choose from a number of different data types plus allow people to contribute their own information."
What I'm looking for. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What I'm looking for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like a lot of things in life, it cuts both ways. Just like cyber-stalking.
Back on-topic: last week we had to send someone to a different city, so we printed out a route map using google maps; we left off ALL the satellite data - its too confusing leaving it in. Plain maps are still the easiest to use, even if they aren't "cool".
Re:What I'm looking for. (Score:3, Informative)
All right! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:All right! (Score:3, Funny)
While we're at it, we can rename this service to "Vitual America", not "Virtual Earth"! Just think of all the hassle and trouble that will be saved for Americans trying to find out which state China is in!
Re:All right! (Score:4, Funny)
It's clearly right next to Cuba, in the communist state.
Re:All right! (Score:3, Funny)
Will they open up the APIs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess not! Further, with google, you can do cool things like http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/ [paulrademacher.com] and http://labs.google.com/ridefinder [google.com].
I betcha MSN's service will not be that flexible. But, I guarantee that it will have all kinds of bells and whistles. (some may really like 45 deg tilt views).
Right now, google works for me. Let's see how MSFT's presentation is, when it comes to fruit!
Re:Will they open up the APIs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but competition is good. How much you want to bet Google comes out with something like this soon as an "optional view" or something?
Re:Will they open up the APIs? (Score:5, Funny)
MS vs. Google (Score:3, Interesting)
So, will Google become the next monolithic organization that must be destroyed by the Slashdot jackboots?
Vapourware? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is more important, bug-free functionality or the launch date?
Re:Vapourware? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Vapourware? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is funny because the media seems to think that Google is just a search engine. It was a search engine back in 1999. Most people seem to be looking at this company as it was 5 years ago, not as it is today.
Google using cold war strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
We used to do a lot of crazy things to make the Russians think our military was bigger and more mobile than it really was. As a result they had to keep spending enormous amounts of money to try to "keep up". They eventually drove their economy into the ground.
Google, gives its workers 20% time to work on personal projects. Some of these go live. Their search cluster basically gives a project unlimited disk and cpu.
When a project goes live, it comes as a surprise. Microsoft, (and others) finds itself caught off guard, and has to work feverishly to make a "better" product before they even have a competing or functioning one.
Since the projects start off as "personal" projects, and considering the number of employees, even corporate espionage can't be very effective, at getting a heads up, because of the noise ratio.
The last part of the strategy is the quiet, surprise releases. No advance anouncements, no press conference or press release. Just a simple link. The media goes crazy because there is a new link on a google page. They get a reputation of producing instead of promising.
The satelite imagery is a great example. They buy a profitable business, Keyhole, and leverage the access to imagery and for a small amount of development effort, integrate it into the mapping service in a very similar way that the mapping service already works. Even though the satelite stuff in maps might lose money, Keyhole is still earning them money. The imagery becomes a value-added feature.
Snow Crash? (Score:3, Informative)
For the uninitiated, Stephenson wrote about a program called Earth (iirc) in Snow Crash that this is pretty similar to in concept.
Er, don't you mean Gibson and Sterling? (Score:2)
contribute their own information (Score:2, Funny)
So you could overlay a map such as to identify the Chinese Embassy or Sudanese pharmaceutical factories? Sounds like something the US military could get ready for use in Iran!
Re:contribute their own information (Score:2, Funny)
The Whitehouse had such a user-contributed map of Iraq years ago. However, somebody trolled it and placed a bunch of phony WMD icons on it.
The question is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft could gain an edge over Google Maps by providing global coverage since the beginning. Otherwise I'm not sure the 45-degree images would bring much added value to the service. Google would probably continue to be #1 in this segment with their yet unmatched UI
Re:The question is.... (Score:2)
What will Google be doing by the time Microsoft catches up with what they did last year?
Better for spotting UFOs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:2)
"Insecurity through obscurity."
Wouldn't it have been better to just cut-n-paste some nearby area?
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:2)
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:2)
First thing that I noticed is that the shadows on the houses are all sourced from the north- and the silver thing's high-lite is on the south side, so the lighting is different.
It sort of looks like a silver map pin that was left on the photo print when that section was scanned- or a hole in the film stock.
Of course I could be one of 'them' passing out red herrings.
*grin*
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better for spotting UFOs (Score:4, Interesting)
for the map. They are found all over the place
dues east-west and north-south
Where exactly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Pranksters (Score:2, Funny)
For some reason I get the feeling that there will be a number of pranksters entering things like:
CowboyNeal's house
Latitude: 38.8975
Longitude: -77.03667
Microsoft is beginng to sound (Score:5, Funny)
Mom: Look! Sue is taking her first step.
Billy: Mom! Look at me! I'm balancing a bowling ball on my nose.
Apple: In Tiger you will have enhanced search capabilities called Spotlight
MS: Forget Tiger's Spotlight, Longhorn will do your homework for you.
Google: Now you can search locations using satellite maps. Nifty, eh?
MS: Google is so 2004. MSN Virtual Search allows you to spy on your neighbor's hot wife.
Re:Microsoft is beginng to sound (Score:3, Funny)
Mom: Look! Sue is taking her first step.
Billy [crawling on stomach]: Mom! Look at me! I can fly!
Virtual Earth or Virtual USA? (Score:2)
Google sucks because it's US-centric in all it does.
If Microsoft can put a similar service that spans the whole globe (well, at least the inhabited bits and their nearby areas - no need to put up two racks to serve images of tundra & trees), that would seriously leapfrog Google and their limited USA-centric service.
Re:Virtual Earth or Virtual USA? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there's some quite nice satellite imagery of Iceland, if that floats your boat
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=64.775391,-19.1601
Re:Virtual Earth or Virtual USA? (Score:2)
Everything they develop is US-centric. Once it's proven to work they might expand it to UK, and after that maybe to other regions. Doesn't matter much for a search engine, but really really matters for a map service...
Re:Virtual Earth or Virtual USA? (Score:2)
wow! (Score:2)
It sure does seem a lot like they're the "followers" these days...
This is at least the 2nd product I can think of off-hand, which was built to directly compete with Google, and which came out after Googles superior product(s) did. The other that immediately comes to mind is of course, their much ballyhoo'd search engine.
Add to that fact that MS is now working hard at just matching the c
Re:wow! (Score:2)
No.
What did MS innovate?
Even as late as 1999, MS Word (with all its money and marketing) was still behind WordPerfect in everything except market share.
Windows has never relly been innovative, just accretive.
IE in pretty vanilla with lots of "innovative" in the marketing.
I have to admit, I like Excel. (Though I've never considered it at all innovative.)
Re:wow! (Score:2)
how soon we forget... (Score:3)
This thing has been around for YEARS, even before Google (IIRC)... so instead of Microsoft copying google, isnt it the other way around?
Terraserver is NOT the same (Score:4, Informative)
Terraserver was just a way for MS to demonstrate its server/database software. Thats it.
MSN needs seamless search integration... (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover, MSN has always had a bloated look and feel. Microsoft will no doubt add the same shiny graphics to it's map service and hinder it's speed. Probably say it's geared
Why is this one company again? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder where MSN got the investment budget for this, off Microsoft or via their own investment/R&D programme.
I'm still very unclear why what Microsoft does in taking Office revenues and subsidising other elements doesn't count as cross-subsidy and thus be in violation of WTO rules.
Anyone else have a clue?
Nice of them to announce their new features early (Score:2)
Ufos! (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if Google eventually dies... (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some links to get you started:
- Mapping Google [blogspot.com]
- Google Suggest Dissected [lifewithalacrity.com]
- Gmail Agent API [johnvey.com]
I'll assume you know how to find each of the actual google services.Competition for free products (Score:3, Interesting)
It's fascinating to think of all these amazing "free" services we have access to, and how they're actually paid for. All that money comes from a "tax" we pay in the form of slightly higher prices on consumer goods. This tax isn't collected by any government, but by the advertising industry.
In this way, there really is real "value" to Cool Stuff(tm) because the more appealing it is, the more people will see it, and the more valuable it is as advertising real estate.
Local data layers (Score:2)
Seriously, lots of people take the bus. Many of them own computers. How about showing me the most efficient bus route, based on either the time I leave or the time I plan to get there?
Bonus points: let me define a list of "regular trips," then e-mail me if there's going to be a schedule service outage or a route change that will affect any of them.
"Phantasmo, the TTC has added route ###, which will make your
Odd (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only google/keyhole (Score:2)
Don't trust this (Score:2)
It would be great if Google went open source... (Score:2)
...because then Microsoft would out of habit.
Hey MS! How about coming up with an original idea for once?
There must be some sort of surgery or brainwashing you have to undergo to work at MS that keeps you from being ashamed about copying other people's work.
Cool... (Score:4, Insightful)
45 degrees? (Score:4, Interesting)
Overlays... (Score:3, Funny)
But how long until it can overlay the map with the red arrows emanating from Redmond, and play the martial marching music, and the rousing speeches about liberating the world for the Fatherland?
Why must they compete with EVERYONE? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a Microsoft basher, nor am I a rampant supporter of them. I have an XP machine at home for gaming, and a Mac for pretty much everything else (OSX for the win!).
Earth moon and satellite viewers (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/ [fourmilab.ch]
and this:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/satellite.html [fourmilab.ch]
Lots of fun playing with that that, hope the MS stuff is even better.
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll find that the people who make money are just fulfilling demand in an existing market, not creating new markets.
This is, of course, based on the assumption that you measure the success of a company by how much money they make....
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:2)
Sure you can. (Score:5, Insightful)
They let others bust their balls trying to develop something that survives out there in the market place.
If and when it does, they swoop in, 'integrate' it into their system and steal the market.
Their R&D is not for 'creating new products' but 'how to integrate new options' as there come up.
They are quite content to let others do the innovating and they take the cream of the crop and then produce a knock-off which takes at least three tries 'till it works.
That's how you make money. And the worst part is that is the strategy for maintaining 'world domination.'
Notice how long Longhorn has been in the paddocks?
Microsoft is waiting for a credible threat until they release Longhorn. The threat is not here yet.
Re:Sure you can. (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, M$ has ALWAYS followed. Any other way is too expensive.
They let others bust their balls trying to develop something that survives out there in the market place.
If and when it does, they swoop in, 'integrate' it into their system and steal the market.
That is not entirely true. MS failed with the:
Re:Sure you can. (Score:3, Interesting)
Xbox is bigger than nintendo cube and posted a profit. [theinquirer.net]
PocketPC has more market share than palm. [toptechnews.com]
IE has ~90% market share.
MSN search traffic is up, google is declining [adweek.com]
MSN is the second largest ISP in the world.
Microsoft doesn't know how to fail. They have taken over the PDA market by ousting palm. They will take over cell market. Growth of MSN search engine suggest they'll oust google. Only things i'm not sure about is game consoles, if sony doesn't live up to the hype, mic
Re:Sure you can. (Score:3, Insightful)
MS got into the PDA market just in time to see it crumble. How many PDAs does Best Buy carry now? What, 4, 5? And no accessories whatsoever. I went to try to find a case for mine, and found they d
Re:Sure you can. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is only version one. The Xbox 360 is coming out now. MS hopes this one will break even. It's version 3 that they hope will eventually dominate the console market like they dominate the OS market. It's a long term game plan.
Losing money on version 1 does not make it a 'failure' when they were planning on it to lose money.
Longhorn's delay isn't a strategy... (Score:3, Funny)
"Microsoft is waiting for a credible threat until they release Longhorn. The threat is not here yet."
Let me correct a spelling error you made:
Microsoft is waiting for a credible build until they release Longhorn. The build is not here yet.
Re:Sure you can. (Score:3, Informative)
I call bullshit. The delays in the release of longhorn have absolutely nothing to do with MS bidding their time. MS has every reason in the world to release longhorn as soon as possible. Sales of XP are leveling off as the market is saturated. They've missed their projected Income [slashdot.org] as reported [cbsnews.com] by multiple sources for the first time since they've started
Suble vs Blatant (Score:5, Insightful)
Google didn't tell anybody. They just added a link to their maps page and said beta. No anouncement, nada. Just a working product, and no expectations.
Microsoft is making an anouncement before they are putting a working product in peoples hands. This may create a lot of expectations, and they will get more critical treatment when bugs are found, if they miss the release date (not MS), etc.
However the MS product turns out. Google will probably end up looking better because they simply released a working service. They didn't hype it up and generate false expectations.
Either way, I think we win as these companies fight one another by making their offerings and products better.
Re:Suble vs Blatant (Score:4, Insightful)
This is standard operational procedure for Microsoft.
They do it to try to get people to hold off adopting a competitor. "Microsoft is going to have something exactly like this available soon! I'll wait, because I expect MS's offering to be superior in some way"
Then when their competitor has withered and died, they go back to ignoring whatever the product-line in question was.
They have to do it like that, because if Microsoft actually follwed-through on all it's promises, they would quickly go through all the cash they have piled-up.
Quality software-engineering costs money, you see.
So it's easier for them to either stay in vapour, or release something that is clearly inferior (most other cases) and hope enough people buy into it "because it's from Microsoft"
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Interesting)
(And it didn't look like ass, unlike the new non-MS site currently living at terraserver.com...)
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure a lot of people though 'Hey, wouldn't it be nice with a search engine that actually finds the good stuff on the web' before Google, maybe some even though alkong the lines of Googles pagerank. But taking that idea and turning it into what Google is today - that is innovative. On the other hand, when Microsoft looked at the pagerank algorithm and said 'Hey - we can copy this and make our own site', that was not innovation, because they are copying an implementation, not an idea.
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:3, Funny)
Take it from a Mac-head, People never buy that argument.
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like Google started the first web search eng... oops.
Just like Google started the first online mappi... oops.
Just like Google started the first online newsgroup sear.... oops.
Just like Google started the first online image sea.... oops.
Just liek Google started the first "local" specific content dir... ooops.
Unless you're the innovator, you at somepoint must follow (including everyones beloved Google).
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:4, Insightful)
Google innovated by making a online mapping app that contains an order of magnitude more data than previous efforts, by making tha data hackable, and by making a much, much better user interface.
Google didn't really innovate by buying Dejanews, AFAIK. Google groups is kinf of bleh.
Google innovated by making their image search contain an order of magnitude more images.
I don't know about how Google compares with other local specific content providers.
I'd say Google does it's fair bit of innovations.
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Informative)
I'm thinking that this isn't something that MS just invented "out of the blue" to compete with Google maps, it has likely been under development for a while.
Re:either you are a leader or a follower (Score:5, Insightful)
So was Google leading or following when they provided a map service with a few cool enhancements over the competition?
Is Microsoft leading or following when they provide a map service with a few cool enhancements over the competition?
Oh, I see. Because it's Google, they're INNOVATING, but because it's Microsoft, they're RIPOFF COPYCATTERS!
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:5, Funny)
Open source calls it: alpha testing
Microsoft calls it: 1.0
Google calls it: shhhh
Apple calls it: unsubstantiated rumors
Open source calls it: beta testing
Microsoft calls it: 2.0
Google calls it: beta testing
Apple calls it: rumors with possibly some substance to them
Open source calls it: release candidate
Microsoft calls it: 3.0
Google calls it: beta testing
Apple calls it: copies are circulated to the usual suspects, who eagerly publish reviews describing it as the "most innovating product yet!"
Open source calls it: 1.0
Microsoft calls it: varies. Previous names have included 3.1, 95, 98, 4.0, 5.0 or X.
Google calls it: beta testing
Apple calls it: released to the market place, Steve Jobs goes on record to say that it is "insanely great".
Open source calls it: 2.0
Microsoft calls it: SP1,2,3...
Google calls it: beta testing
Apple calls it: a recall
And of course, for all of the versions above:
Slashdot puts a writeup on the front page. A million posters call it a Slashvertisement. Somebody quotes CmdrTaco's lame-as-an-iPod comment. Atleast one thread will begin with a Goatse link and will end with a reference to either Adolf Hitler.
Robert X. Cringley will claim with a smile that he knew this was coming.
Paul Graham will write an article on how it could have been done better with Lisp, but oh well, good job anyways.
Linus Torvalds will say nothing.
Bill Gates will appear on pictures smiling evily.
Steve Jobs will appear on pictures stoned.
Maddox will put a writeup on his site involving the item in question and a penis.
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:2)
Indeed with regard to this story, the angle of view can vary dramatically over a small area, sometimes you see the north side of one building, and the south side of a neighboring building! [I guess in such cases maybe they used aerial imagery instead of satellite photos.]
Certainly quality control is a hard problem with
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:2)
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:5, Informative)
That's what you get with satellite imagery when you order humungous off the shelf data sets.
This problem doesn't take any creativity to fix, just cash. With an outlay of cash you can order up custom imagery that meets your technical specifications with a specified level of consistency. Then you need a staff to check it, and then prepare it for use by rubber sheeting it and registering it, or in this case cutting it up into little tiles. This process requires considerable investment in staff, software, equipment and procedures, but it's efficient once it gets into gear.
Last time I looked into this for a client, I figured he could get really good custom sat imagery for his entire county for something like $10,000. There are 3140 counties in the US, of various sizes (this was a large one); what is more if you're ordering data on this scale, you probably can get a pretty good deal on a per image basis. But we can safely say that if you want really excellent data which fits your purpose precisely and covers the entire US in high resolution, you're talking millions by the time you're done.
Using off the shelf data, you have good enough imagery for a lot less money, which makes sense for the speculative launch of a free service. Now that Google has shown how to use AJAX to make the data more interactive, it's only a matter of time before somebody decides to copy them, but one up them on the data quality. Money seeks obvious problems. Fortunately for Google, they have money too now; maybe they're not fated to being the R&D lab for the industry.
Finally I'd have to say the idea of using images shot from a low angle like 45 degrees instead of overhead is good and bad.
Reasons its bad:
* You can't rectify the image and use it for anything that requires geographic precision.
For example, look at the image in the article, particularly the tower in the upper right hand corner. Consider the column of about 30 windows on the left edge of the tower. The geographic positions of all of these windows are exactly the same, but they show up in different positions in the photograph. The same thing happens when one road crosses another on an overpass. If the angle is such that you can see underneath the overpass, then a geographic position on the bridge deck will have a second representation on the photograph: the point on the roadway directly beneath it. The software which plots the vector representation of the roads is not going to know this, unless the data is tweaked for every overpass in the country. Maybe if you had high res elevation data like a LIDAR survey you could mathematically tweak the entire data set.
People tend to believe a photo more than anything else, but the fact is the precision of photos from a geographic standpoint is highly limited. When using imagery with data from other sources such as GPS and surveying, you can't expect it to line up very well. Things are better if you have in image shot from above with a narrow field of view, and if your target area doesn't have much topography.
* You can't see details that are behind hills or structures.
Obviously. If you are interested in an alleyway that's behind a building, or a lot that is obscured by an elevated highway, then tough.
What is good about the 45 degree image is that it does provide a lot of information that you wouldn't get otherwise about the z dimension, for example you can easily see that in the cluster of buildings on the left side of the image, the building with the pyramid cap is the tallest -- indeed that it has a pyramidal cap. Generally, with imagery, you want one taken in the early morning or late afternoon, especially in low latitudes like Miami. A low sun throws a lot of detail into relief, and a high sun tends to wash it out.
Re:The freedom to innovate! (Score:2)
Re:Not invented here (Score:2)
Re:Not invented here (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, but at least they came up with that on their own.
Re:Virtual USA? (Score:2)
I live in the UK, and we have this functionality already: have a look at my office's location [multimap.com]
Multimap do a lis of other countries, but I do not know how good the aerial coverage (or map data) is.
Re:Virtual USA? (Score:2)
Re:Virtual Earth??? (Score:2)
Or tactical planning simulator. How to prepare to blow your city council building in the most efficient manner. As a matter of fact it will be great if someone writes a map converter to load these into a decent flight simulator or into one of the first person shooters. And once again, quite usefull on planning your revenge on that pesky council clerk that did not give you planning permission for that nice cannon tower you were planning in your backyard
On a more serious note, I
Actually (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MSN, you're still copycats. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MSN, you're still copycats. (Score:3, Informative)
Google does the same thing Microsoft does. They take other people
MSN had maps longer before Google did (Score:5, Informative)
I guess this is just typical Slashdot pro-Google cheerleading.
Disclaimer: I work at MSN.
Re:MSN, you're still copycats. (Score:2)
I mean, if you didn't, there'd be no choice and no competition.
There would be only one brand of cars (all but the original car manufacture would be copycats)...
People need to get past the idea that companies can only come up with original ideas.
Copying creates competition and enlarges the market and give people more choices. Thank goodnes for all of the iPod clones.
TerraServer is older than Google Maps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MSN, you're still copycats. (Score:3, Insightful)
It made me wonder why it still felt like your comment was valid on an emotional level. Other web sites have, in fact, integrated maps and satellite images - just not nearly as effectively as Google. The effective integration is why we love Google maps.
Well, I realized what the reason was and thought I would share it. Microsoft should do things to catch
Re:MSN, you're still copycats. (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is, more and more it seems like providing a presentation/UI that doesn't stink out loud is innovation.
To take Google maps as an example - I hadn't found a website that provided streetmaps of the UK with a decent UI. The existing sites would scroll (sorry, page) unreliably, often sending you somewhere that is almost, but not completely, unadjacent to your last view. And let's not forget their favourite - limit the map to a goddamn postage stamp, even though I have a 1280x1024 display, and surround it with distracting garbage.
With Google maps, it's simple and clear, I can maximise the window and the map fills the screen (shock horror!), scroll around as quickly or slowly as I like, and zoom in and out to the level I want, etc.
In some ways, you could say that this is the definition of innovation. Yes, it's obvious, but no-one else seemed to be doing it. (I've seen some better sites since Google Maps launched - that pre-dated Google Maps - but they're still not as simple and easy to use).
I'm reminded of something a friend once said about the iPod - that when the iPod was launched, everyone agreed, yes, this is how mp3 players should be designed and work. Everyone, that is, except all the other companies who made mp3 players.
My point is, some companies/websites will look at a site like Google Maps, and just not get why it is better, and just bitch about how they've been doing maps for ages, so what's so special about Google?
Re:International maps? (Score:2)
The NRO is contributing to the image database. Their Iran coverage is particularly good, in many wavelengths.