MSN's VirtualEarth.com - home run gone foul, but still better than GoogleEarth
growled on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 9:25:30 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
barked at microsoft
VirtualEarth.com, a new satellite image site by MSN.  It just went public.  Initially, it looks pretty sweet.  Everyone's posting about it now.  Everyone's looking at it now.  Everyone's critiquing it now.  Everyone's comparing it to Google Earth.  Everyone's watching...
 
Hold on a sec, I have a quick question...why the hell are the images 14 f**kin years old?
 
Let me clarify, only some of the images are older than internet dirt. 
 
Like my house for example, or lack-there-of.  I've lived in the same house for the last 7 years.  What does VirtualEarth show when I type in my address?  An empty field (I live in a small community with farmland and pastures for miles and miles).
 
That begs the question, what does Google Earth show for my home address?  Well, they actually did worse.  I get a very blurry photo of the area that doesn't even show enough detail for me to tell if it's pasture (more than 8 years old) or streets.  Not too mention that Google Earth requires you to install an application while MSN's VirtualEarth runs completely in my browser. 
 
Lots of people are also talking about the lack of Apple headquarters in Cupertino also.  Todd Bishop, of the Seattle PI, also provides Microsoft's official response to the old images.  Here's a portion of it "MSN Virtual Earth was launched as a beta, and we expect to provide regular incremental updates, as well as major upgrades throughout the year."
 
No offense to the team that put this together.  You got a lot of it right.  The site looks awesome, has great response times for loading complex images and doesn't require an application be installed, but the old content...give me a freakin break!  What's the first thing every single person is going to look for when they hit the site.  Their own home.  Next to that might be their workplace (sorry Apple folks) or their family's homes.

This was definitely a home-run-outta-the-park potential hit that just ran the baseline and ended up foul.
 
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