I’m not paid by Microsoft to sell their products to you guys, but after experimenting with Bing Maps for a few minutes, it became evident that Microsoft has invested a lot of effort in providing serious competition with the now almost ubiquitous Google Maps. If someone at Microsoft reads this, they should really consider paying me. A great amount of money, too.

Satellite imagery software has traditionally been focused on mapping high population density zones over small cities and rural areas. Most imagery available before now was also focused on US territory. Seeing as I live in a small Canadian city, I was very pleased at seeing that I could now take advantage of the image resolution necessary to peek at windows (of corporate buildings such as that of l’Assomption Vie, of course…).

Bird's eye view in Bing showing downtown Moncton at maximum zoom

Google Maps showing maximum zoom of downtown Moncton

Don’t take my word for it, but I encourage you to try out this nifty tool Microsoft has put at your disposition. Who knows, maybe it will be just as good an improvement over Google Maps in your area as it was in mine! Although my fair skepticism at Bing Maps has all but disappeared, I will be the first one to stand by Google’s search engine as Bing (search) attempts to compete.