MSN Virtual Earth

I posted on Google Maps, so I might as well post on MSN’s new service called Virtual Earth.
I’m not saying this because I’m a Google fanboy nor a MS hater, but because it’s a fact: Virtual Earth sucks bigtime. Why? Lots of reasons: It goes slow as hell, sometimes it just stops loading new imagery, leaving you a nice black window, the imagery IS in fact in black and white, no colors like in Google Maps, and it uses dated imagery: the same landstat pictures that have been available for years. How we know? Well for example take the Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA: MSN’s version is here and Google’s is here.

See the difference? Google shows the Apple Cupertino HQ – a lovely, shiny building probably full of iPods. MSN on the other hand shows an apparently empty field. Not as much as a black turtle-necked jumper remains of Apple’s headquarters. This could be no more than an old picture taken before Cupertino was built or a glimpse of an imagined future.

Another example is the Twin Towers, yep: they’re still there.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good things about Virtual Earth: eg. the ability to zoom with the scroll wheel (although you can add that function to GMaps with a greasemonkey script) is nice, and the world view (zoom out completely) on msn virtual earth is stunning: it looks ‘cleaner’ than GMaps.

To conclude: MSN launched a new service with old pictures.