Microsoft, Google Take Maps In New Direction
The battle between Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. has shifted into new territory: a race to see who can make online maps that make people feel like they're really there.
After lagging behind Google Maps, Microsoft this week unveiled an overhaul of its Bing Maps Web site that supplements the traditional bird's eye view of cities and other locations with rich photographs on the ground. In addition to the street-level images pioneered by Google Maps that let people 'move' along the roads pictured, Microsoft's technology stitches together images uploaded by users into three-dimensional photo collages. The technology, called Photosynth, lets users post on Bing Maps interior shots of everything from restaurants to museums to hotels.
The Microsoft technology and similar efforts by Google are further signs that online maps are evolving from a digital version of an atlas into something more akin to a videogame. Both Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., and Google, Mountain View, Calif., are experimenting with a variety of tools that make hunting for locations far more immersive.
Having better maps gives Microsoft and Google more than just bragging rights. It also potentially gives companies who use their Internet maps -- such as hotels and restaurants -- a new tool for attracting business and standing out from competitors.
'Bing has pushed what Google was doing a step forward,' says Greg Sterling, an analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence.
John Hanke, vice president of Google maps, said Microsoft is playing 'catch up' with most of its new map features, pointing out that Google also lets people post images that show up in Google maps in the locations they were shot.
The photo collages on Bing, which Microsoft calls 'synths,' go beyond ordinary panoramic images that allow people to pivot around a street scene from a single fixed point. Users can create the synths with a conventional digital camera by snapping dozens or even hundreds of shots of the interior of, say, a furniture store, from a variety of vantage points.
Consumers can then use a free program from Microsoft that stitches the images together in such a way that they can experience a crude simulation of moving around inside the store by clicking around the photo collage with their mouse. Anybody can then make the synth accessible through Bing Maps, represented by a pin icon on the spot where the images were shot.
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