Written By Reprise Media | April 18, 2006 | Share This |

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There have been so many new developments with online maps in recent months, it’s been hard to keep up. There’s Windows Live Local’s ‘bird’s eye’ views, and the explosively popular Google Maps API that launched a thousand ‘mash-ups;’ we liked Ask.com’s brand new map tool (with multi-point directions), and last week’s Yahoo! Maps Beta upgrade (also with multi-point directions). But until yesterday, no one took the leading online map services and ran them head-to-head to see which one did the job best. Enter Techcrunch.

Their article takes five leading maps - Mapquest, Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps Beta, Ask Maps & Directions, and Windows Live Local - then breaks them down, feature by feature, Consumer Reports-style. Their overall pick? Yahoo Maps, for a user interface that provides live traffic info in addition to multi-point directions that are easily sent to a cell phone. Ask.com, whose UI we found to be very similar to Yahoo!’s, lost points for being a bit slower than its counterparts and for having the most error-prone directions computations - a definite drawback.

The reviews didn’t pass without a little controversy. Discussing the directions function of the Windows Live offering, Techcrunch says, “the route from point-to-point is not marked with a line like its competitors.” This was disputed by Robert Scoble, who sees a clear line on a map of his daily commute. It looks like they’re both right, sort of. We saw a bright green line when we opened Scoble’s link using Internet Explorer, but the line is strangely absent from the picture in our Firefox window; numerous Scobleizer readers are talking about this, also.

The Techcrunch piece generated a lot of lively discussion, but one thing is not in dispute: 10-year old Mapquest is by far the most popular of the map services, attracting more users than Google and Yahoo! put together. It’s not for a plethora of cool features, either; Mapquest doesn’t exactly generate a lot of buzz these days. The AOL tool quietly dominates the market by picking one thing and doing it well: A-to-B driving directions. We’re sure it doesn’t hurt to have AOL’s traffic behind them, and their longevity is doubtless another factor. Nevertheless, it seems that a lot of neat gizmos does not the most popular online map site make - at least not yet.

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