I’ve been a google maps user for a long time, but I recently started using Microsoft Maps as my first choice. I prefer the cleaner interface of Google maps, but more and more I’ve found Goggle maps giving me incorrect directions or, worse, an incorrect location for an address. Example: Saturday I had to take my daughters to David’s Bridal for a fitting (my son’s getting married, they will be in the wedding.) I looked up David’s Bridal in the business search in Google maps, found the one I was looking for, looked at the location, figured out the best way to drive there. Looked it up in Microsoft Maps and it was in a completely different location, in a completely different part of town. These were NOT two different stores - they both were listed with the same address. I called them, turns out the MS maps location was correct. I would have been wandering around for who knows how long had I just used the Google Maps location. This has happened more than once with me.
Interesting. I don’t think I have ever done what you just did. I always get the address of the place I want to go directly from that place (either the website or by calling them) then I plug the actual address into Google maps.
I’ve never even used Microsoft maps…didn’t know they even had a map site.
For driving directions, I use my car GPS. For locating local retailers I use local.google.com.
Before I got the GPS I always used Google Maps to find stuff and Mapquest to make driving directions - theirs always seemed a bit saner than the ones from Google.
As much as I loved Google Maps, and the cleaner interface, I’m finding the more I use MS Maps the more I like some of it’s features:
In the aforementioned bridal shop incident, I had MS maps give me suggested directions. There was a warning that one of the streets was under construction and was now one way, and it gave a detour route.
While both have a sky view, MS Maps “Birds’s eye” view is much sharper and gives more detail. In fact, we found the shop more easily because the bird’s eye view clearly showed a Toys R Us store right next to it.
As mentioned, Google maps more and more has wrong locations for business searches, even though it’s showing the same address as MS Maps.
And yeah - need to get me that Nuvi 350 for Christmas. ;)
I would expect that from someone from Lenexa ;) (I live in the Northlands.)
Nah, just seeing if someone pops up with some cool mapping web site I never heard of or “Hey, have you updated your Google maps with the xzy plugin? That fixes the problems you’re talking about!” since I prefer the Google interface.
I’ve never had that problem with Google Maps – and I use it religiously. My FAVORITE feature of it – the mobile application. I’ve got Google Maps on my cell phone, my company blackberry, and Jen has it on her phone…it rocks my world – even if I just use it to get phone numbers. Beats the hell outta calling information. :-)
If you have a Windows Mobile phone, try out the Windows Live Search mobile app. It has a nicer interface than the Google Maps application, IMO, plus other nice features like a gas station map and voice recognition. The only thing that I prefer about Google Maps is that it is generally better about properly interpreting shorthand (i.e. “baker and smith” instead of “baker ave. and smith st.”) than Live Search is.
Microsoft’s Live maps have by far the prettiest 3d city renderings (for major cities). The transamerica pyramid in SF is actually a pyramid, and not a box like google, and most buildings are actually textured. I thought the seams between tiles were better integrated too. But I guess that’s all about eye candy .
Getting around I usually use google, I really like how you can click in the middle of a suggested route and drag it to get alternate routes with updated drive estimates (maybe you can do that in Live maps too, I dunno.)
I was a Mapquest user until Google maps showed up. The thing for me is that Google Map behaves the way I expect. I can type in shorthand stuff and generally get what I want. Google maps may have been superceded by other web-based mapping apps, but its done well enough that I haven’t had the notion to look at other sites.
I had to find directions in my recent trip to Moscow. Google Maps had all the street names in cyrillic, so and I used Microsoft Mapquest for the first time as it had the street names in the latin alphabet, I was quite impressed with its ease of use.
I usually default to Google Maps, but I do sometimes find it gives me a bum location or can’t find something I know exists. Local.live.com (MS’s map site) really does have some impressive stuff. Depending on where you’re looking at, their “bird’s eye” view is really impressive.
On the mobile, it’s the Windows Mobile Live Search app all the way. Great maps, directions, phone numbers, all that stuff. It’s really better designed for smart-phone use than Google’s mobile gmaps.
Looks like MapQuest was by far the market leader, at least last year. I personally use Google Maps when I just want to find something and Yahoo Maps if I need directions.
