Mapping battles are fun!

vs.

Remember the good old days of Mapquest and Microsft's TerraServer when you had to click a cardinal direction and load one square of a map at a time? Gee, wasn't that fun?

No...I agree. It wasn't. Which is why the current "Mapping Wars" are so great.

This whole thing seems to have started when Google created one of it's killer apps by acquiring Keyhole.

Now we are fortunate enough to have two excellent products that are constantly one-upping each other.

Between Google Earth and Microsoft's new Virtual Earth 3D we have access to a wealth of cartographic information with an interface that is light years ahead of the old school click and re-load interfaces of just 3 or 4 years ago.

Microsoft's new tool actually bests Google Earth, in my opinion, by packaging almost all of the rich user experience that Google Earth is popular for into a simple web interface.

The one downside to Google Earth was that it required a stand-alone application that must be downloaded and installed.

While Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D still requires a helper application to be downloaded and installed, the actual interface is completely inside of IE.

While it would be nice if they could completely avoid the client-side download and installation requirement, the fact that these applications are so graphics intensive means that a client-side helper app will still be required for some time.

Enjoy the new 3D views of the world.

Oh...and don't forget to go VOTE!