http://virtualearth.msn.com/

It is meant to be a competitor for Google Earth. And it is USELESS.

Any service like this that still shows the Twin Towers is doomed.

while talking about google earth. is it worth to spend money for the Pro version?

I don't know. It zooms in closer than Google in some places. The pictures seem fairly recent, as recent as Googles. I'm referring to my area, not NYC. OTOH, Googles works better. Neither seem to work in Firefox.

now now scott,

this virtual earth beta HAS been up for over a year now, without much updating. I think, the next update is not till september, so let's give it a moment.

Of course, it would have been much easier for MSFT to buy keyhole, and then they could have just rebadged and updated that software within six months, and released it.

As for the pro version, I have it based on my previous keyhole subscriptions. I wouldn't say the zoom is that much better, for some reason it seems to run faster and refresh faster, I think I am getting logged into a differant server when using the login.

Both work just fine for me in Firefox...

I couldn't find any areas that zoomed in better than Google, and the photos of my area were exactly the same as Google had.

No idea why Microsoft would waste money on this, Google (and Keyhole) have been doing this much longer and are ahead of Microsoft by years...

Google has already responded by adding a Hybrid selection to maps.google.com that overlays the street map on to the imagery.

cool stuff!

IT looks to me like the newer pics (color) were taken by plane, not satellite as they seem much closer and better defined than the Google maps ones. In other instances, the maps are really old. For instance, the Apple campus in Cupertino is depicted as a vacant lot (early 90s).

I paid the $20 for Google Earth plus and I love it.

I'm in Beijing now and I was meeting with the government on a project. I asked for a satellite map and they didn't have one. So I whipped out my laptop, fired up Google Earth and completely blew them away. Three of them bought the Plus version on the spot. Beijing is photographed fairly well, but no street names. Other parts of China do not have good photos.

There was a thread on slashdot yesterday talking about the differences - the MS version doesn't show the Apple campus in Cupertino. It turned out that both MS and Google had newer or older images in someplaces and BOTH had images more than 15 years old and and different levels of detail.

It looks like Microsoft and Google are accessing the exact same pictures. My mom was visiting a friend, waiting for me to arrive home from a trip on June 13, 2002. Her car is visable in the picture that shows that apartment building on both of those services as well as the original terraserver.microsoft.com which has been up for several years.

The MSN virtual earth service zooms in the tightest. Terraserver was second, slightly less using the same picture, just not stretched as much. The free Google was quite a bit less, the premium one will probably go to the same point as the Microsquish ones.

I then tested a place in Kenya I know well. Terraserver and Google didn't even go there, but MSN virtual earth did. I couldn't even come close to the town I wanted to see there though. The clear winner there was NASA's World Wind http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ Too bad it doesn't match the other ones in the US.

Have fun exploring the world.