MSN Local Search

MSN Local SearchMicrosoft has to take off their blinders, and start looking at previous offerings before offering something new. Their MSN Toolbar implementation is inferior to every other tabbed browser implementation already available, and now they've introduced their <A href="http://search.msn.com/local">MSN Local Search beta</A> with scrollable aerial maps, and it's nowhere near as good as Google Maps. I mean, what's the point of releasing something later than the competition, that's not as good? Why do I say it's not as good? <UL> <LI>It's slower. <LI>The window is tiny.  A maximized browser on my 1600x1200 desktop shows a map that takes up maybe 20% of the browser window; the Google version uses about 80% of the browser window. <LI>It only covers the US (I'm in Canada). <LI>The satellite images are black & white, and very dark (Google is in colour).</LI></UL>I like they way they overlay the search results, and highlight them as you mouseover the search hits, but in every other way I can tell, Google's got em beat. Admittedly this isn't the "Virtual Earth", a project they haven't released yet, but it's the first time time the world gets to see their next generation mapping technology.  I wish they'd presented it better. Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:17:09 GMT