Microsoft's reply to Google Streetview falls short

Microsoft's reply to Google Streetview, Bing Streetside, falls short of expectations. These past few weeks they've had cars taking photo's and mapping out London's street network. However, we've seen the result of the New York mapping and it isn't quite clear why they have bothered.

For one, they are reinventing the wheel. Google have already got a street view of pretty much anything you could want a street view of, their images are high quality and their system is easier to use. You'd think that for an alternative to enter the market, they would need to somehow improve on the service offered by the competitors, so let's compare.

• Image Quality. Whilst the image quality on Streetside isn't poor, it almost definitely isn't better than what Google came up with. Here is a view of a randomly selected street in New York on Streetview and then again on Streetside. My personal preference is the Streetview image, which appears clearer.
• Coverage. Hard to say at this point because Streetside is still in the process of gaining it's data, but I can't imagine it is going to smash Streetview on that one either, seeing as Streetview did get pretty much everything covered.
• Usability. Streetview will run just using Javascript, whereas Streetside requires Microsoft Silverlight to be installed... sounds like typical Microsoft tactics to me!

The annoying quest for market domination, which Microsoft routinely attempts to accomplish, will hopefully fall short in this venture. To read a more indepth article on the matter, check this link to a post on the Telegraph technology blog.