MSN Virtual Earth Gives People an Immersive Way to Search, Discover and Explore Their World Online

REDMOND, Wash. — July 24, 2005 — Microsoft Corp. today announced beta availability of MSN® Virtual Earth™, a new Web service that further builds on the company’s investment in the search category by harnessing the company’s extensive search and mapping capabilities to give people an immersive way to utilize location-based information online. The service enables users to search, discover, explore, plan and share information and activities relevant to specific U.S. locations by combining aerial imagery, detailed maps and precise local search capabilities. Users can access the beta version of the service at http://virtualearth.msn.com.

You can read the full press release here. I am a huge fan of Google Maps and Google Earth, so I was hard pressed to like Microsofts version. After playing around with it for a bit, I find it much more buggy than Google’s version, but with Virtual Earth, you can zoom in further than Google, and still have great looking quality. I look forward to seeing updates in a future.. and hopefully like Google, they will release a stand alone application.