Everybody loved Google maps — particularly their zoom-in and out on the satellite images. If you are Microsoft and you want to enter the space now, what would you do. You clearly will make them more sexy and put more features. And that’s what they did.
You just got to visit their beta site and play with it to explore what they offer. I like it. But for regular use, I may still stay with simple Yahoo Maps, though for seeing and exploring a particular neighborhood, I will go with Google or Microsoft.
Now the next phase will be for enriching the real local content.
And yes, computer vision people can now do some exciting resarch in ‘where am I ‘ using these maps and pictures taken using camera phones.