Responding to Microsoft's new Virtual Earth beta in a SF Chronical article, Gary Price of SearchEngineWatch.com, says of the new service:
"...the focus on aerial imagery is more of a case of companies trying to impress users with gee-whiz technology than anything else...I don't think that seeing an image from the air is going to make me go to a store and buy something."
Instead Gary wants to see more data appear as you scroll through a map.
OK, sure more geo-tagged information would be nice, but otherwise I couldn't disagree more strongly.
Yes, checking imagery can impact where or when I might buy something. I do this already. When planning out my TechEd trip a couple months back--where did I go to figure out which hotel I wanted to stay at? maps.Google.com--with the aerial imagery enabled. It made a big difference in my choice. Yes, it would have been nice if I could hover over a hotel to see how much a room is and maybe have shaded red regions where hotels were sold out over a given date range, but I wanted to feel good about where I was going to stay. I wanted to know if there was a restaurant near by--or was the hotel isoltated. Did the area look rundown? I've already done the same thing in arranging my trip to PDC 05.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I want more. Yeah, better resolution would be nice, but I also want real time projections of highway video overlayed on the maps. Yes, I want to see what the traffic is like in the same map. I even would like to see similar real-time video projections of mall parking lots or at toll-booths or other high-congestion areas.
The state of Arizona has a terrific real-time map with road-conditions. I'd love to see the road condition tags augmented with maps.google.com or similar services. We need real-time, RSS-like feeds that people can merge with the images.
How else might I use aerial imagery to determine which store I will go to? How easy is it to park? Do I have to go to a parking garage? How much might that be--that'd be nice to see graphically in a map. Is the entrance to a store best approached from the south or the north? Is there a mass transit terminal near by that I can take? I might pick one place over another that looks closer. These are the types of things I check already.
Do I check maps.google.com whenever I want to drive to buy something? Nope. But when I'm unsure of an area I'm finding myself doing it more and more. And now with my EVDO-equipped Tablet PC, I expect this trend to continue.
Virtual Earth is a beginning. Hopefully, it won't just be a gee-wiz toy as Gary predicts, because I see a lot of great uses for it.
Overall I like the direction. It appears that both Google and MSN are competing to provide searchers with greater visual detail and more geo-tagged information. That's great. My only suggestion is for them to tie in real-time feeds from other sources--current store hours, wait times at the DMV, projected video feeds, and on and on. There's plenty of room for some very useful geo-oriented views of the world.
Posted by Loren at July 26, 2005 12:47 PM;-) well, you certainly won't be buying an Apple.
Posted by: John Doe on July 27, 2005 06:42 AMYeah, I'll do OK as long as I only go to stores pre-1992 :-)
I do have an Apple though. And I'm eagerly waiting to see how the new Intel-based Apples look too.
Posted by: Loren on July 27, 2005 08:50 AM