Maps Battle...Yawn...

Microsoft just unveiled their VirutalEarth with a nice overlay of stuff on top of satellite photos. Google immediately released a version of their Google Maps that has the same type of features. Boy, those Microsoft and Google peoples are really battling it out for the "cool" factor for mapping, but really does it make all that much sense? Not for me, and sooner or later not for anyone else either. Satellite photos of the top of a building or thousands of miles of asphault -- with or without labels -- is not all that much useful to me. What will bring me to a mapping site over and over again are features like Smartview (which lays on top of a map useful places like restaurants) and Traffic (which lets me know that I'll be going 10MPH on 101S between 280 and Tully right now) -- both of these features are available on Yahoo! Maps). When all is said and done, people make return visits to the mapping site that gives information and not cool photos of the top of the building where they will be visiting -- so have at it Microsoft and Google.