Microsoft’s latest attempt to lure eyeballs away from Google comes in the form of bigger, better and much more clever Bing Maps. But is it a big enough improvement to tempt punters away from the big G? Read on to find out.
The new beta release of Bing Maps uses Microsoft’s Silverlight multimedia technology to enhance the mapping experience. One of the new features is Streetside which is basically, and not surprisingly, a copy of Google’s Street View.
There are a few original ideas though, but you’ll have to wade through a plethora of Microsoft marketing buzzwords if you want to hear about them. Satya Nadella, senior VP of online services, speaking via the Bing blog, said about how proud Microsoft is of its “spatial search”, “the physical canvas” and its “application gallery”. Err, rightio.
What this translates as is a couple of cool features that integrate the map data with what is going on in real time. For example you can now see Twitter updates on maps via Twitter’s geo-tagging function. And there is also a local lens service that indexes nearby blogs using the words in the posts and places them physically on a map.
Bing has grown steadily since its official launch back in June, increasing Microsoft’s search market share from 8% up to nearly 10%. Google is still way out in front though on 65%, with Yahoo! in second place at 18% – although its share is in decline.
Try out the beta version of Bing Maps for yourself here, and let us know what you think via the comments below.
