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New Ask.com Maps upgrades to beat Google Maps

maps.ask.com — Including street, aerial and mixed (hybrid) views just like Google Local/Maps and with a similar sweet AJAX interface. This is part of the upgrade to Ask.com since the Jeeves character was axed recently. Also includes traffic directions and local search. It's great to see some decent rivals coming along such as this.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 2, 2006

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  • butchcassidy503, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I still think local.live.com is the best.
  • mayhemt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sat images look newer than google maps..but lot slower
  • BingeBoy, on 01/18/2008, -0/+1Who cares unless there is a API
  • syntheticfth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1...double true?
  • tackle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm sorry, Yahoo Maps Beta is clearly the winner.

    http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/
  • carguy84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it's ask slow
  • codeman38, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Slower, doesn't work in Safari (but does in Camino), but it does have much higher-resolution pictures of the University of Georgia than what Google offers and newer ones than Virtual Earth.
  • apollolee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google Maps is the best, but... MSN Maps has had Western European street-level maps for over three years and even now includes parts of Brazil and all of Australia. Google Maps has street maps for the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, and Japan (and, due to the Olympics, a small chunk of Italy). Yahoo Maps (maps.yahoo.net) includes a much larger portion of Europe and driving directions all over the place. Ask.com Maps includes the US, Canada, and all of Western Europe, along with a good amount of Eastern Europe.

    Google Maps has the cleanest interface, but every other mapping service contains street maps of Europe. Every road atlas sold in the US contains detailed highway maps of the US and Canada, but also an overview of Mexico. I'm going to continue to be a little bit disappointed with Google Maps (only a little bit) until they broaden the maps to include a coverage area at least as big as that of rival MSN Maps.

    I'm a map geek and I want to use gmap-pedometer and wayfaring to plot my future bike tours, dammit!
  • blatheron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The new Windows Live Local "streetside" technology uses actual photos, 1 photo per 8 meters in big cities. Way cooler, although just for SF and Seattle right now.

    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1932059,00.asp
  • just2digg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I liked it! I hope they'll open a developer API as Google does; because this one looks sweeter.

    It's good to see competition.
  • Yankees368, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How come i get some old crappy system when i use OPERA but not firefox
  • prot0col, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Old maps and SLOW!
  • buss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ask has the newest images of Gainesville Florida, they're in color and close up!
  • Dan005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I these map systems that give you grey tiles when you are zoomed in to far. Just zoom into the image like google does, it looks much better than nothing!
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Definitely slower!
  • meefman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The imagery for my area is atleast a year older than the one on Google Maps/Earth.
  • whiteghetto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ask is amazingly slow and it has the exact same images for my area as google
  • jasontho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0soooooooooooo sloooooooooooooooow
  • recursive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The walking directions feature looks awesome. I can use this for bike directions. Normally map services give directions including limited access "free"ways on which bicycles and pedestrians are prohibited, and thus are not useful to me. If they can fix the speed/bandwidth problem, this will be my preferred online map.
  • h2d2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@kivatech

    The images are not that old... may be u should ask your wife what he was doing there in the middle of the day...
  • LeroyBrown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0being able to use the scroll wheel for zoom in/out is awesome too!
  • kamal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this is tooooooo slowwwwwwwwwwwwww
  • Qubous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WOW! Sat images were MUCH more high res! New construction shows up also.
  • sophiaperennis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The satellite images are newer than Google in certain areas, that's a plus. Nevertheless, the map rendering of streets, and especially polygonal entities like parks is just plain aweful. Not to mention that the satellite-image completion times are slow, and missing parcels is very common. Overall experience of ask.com doesn't even come close to that of Google.com.
  • rndmculture, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0slow as crap... images broken... yuk
  • Elxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I agree with the fifty gajillion other comments. Looks to have some nice features, but it's sloooow. And my house has apparently turned into a broken image :(
  • wjkeena, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0too damn slow
  • Yankees368, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The long island maps are at LEAST 4 years old
  • amigiac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Lame, the UK road maps are wrong, and the aerial photos have so little detail, even at this stage in development google took more care to get things right.
  • jsmucker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really this is a good thing, the more companies that do this the better it will get, Anyway the maps are older that I viewed and I can’t get as close zooming in as Google, MSN and Yahoo so I will not be using it.
  • jpsnagi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0SLOW SLOW SLOW SLOW SLOW. Google, MSN Local and Yahoo local are much much better. Google is the top choice.
  • dayquil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0beat? this doesn't even come close. it looks pretty nice, i'll give it that. but it's glitchy as sin and its refresh behaviors are a major problem. all the reasons why people love google products are the same reasons this isn't going to "beat" anything.
  • MrMaveric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This map is great.. For anyone in america
  • kkaefer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0At least they have maps from Germany. Google doesn't.
  • jeolmeun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mouse scroll wheel zoom + Right click context menu
  • kylef, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My area has a verrrry old image.
  • orangeRam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Google map of my house is only 2 yrs old, this is about the same in age, so tie there

    I hate that interface though, and much prefer the sweeping zoom of Google Earth, even if things become indistinguishingly pixelated after a certain point

    And everyone's right, its slow as poo
  • shakey77, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Forgot the links to the related Diggs...

    Correct All Online Map Sites at the Source with Navteq: http://digg.com/technology/Correct_the_Online_Map_Sites_at_the_Source_with_Navteq

    Where those driving directions really come from: http://digg.com/technology/Where_those_driving_directions_really_come_from
  • mlerner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"slow, yes - but it has map data from outside the US / UK, and because of that it beats maps.google.com for me."

    Yeah too bad I can't zoom down to my house :/
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Microsoft's is better.
    (In the event that they begin charging for it, I retract this statement.)
  • hjbc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0not sure I agree with the Better than Google, I can see my house on Google but not with Jeeves. Rejected as Digg
  • gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0looks nowhere close to google interface wise here in OSX/Safari. The big maps had layout bugs too.

    Nice to see someone moving in the right direction, but at this point I'd hardly say it competes with google maps. No digg.
  • recursive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Also awesome: right click > add location
  • guitardvark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0due to speed issues this is trash compared to google
  • dengar69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0aerial view is sloooooooooow!
  • surflineg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, I'm sitting at my office (an ISP) and this thing is S-L-O-W.
  • LeroyBrown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think it looks great.
    The biggest negative to me is that they ripped off google maps big time -- interface looks nearly identical.
    Resolution on a few quick images looks MUCH better than google maps.
    The slowness, of course, stinks; but I think you can expect that to get much better with time. If not, they obviously won't stand a chance against google.
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh and yes, Ask's speed and update reliability sucked for me too, so big advantage to Google there. Nothing's more frustrating than to keep getting a half updated map to update properly.
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Google has still better global coverage (not sure about US coverage, but globally it seems Google has better satellite maps on average). Ask looks much better than MSN though, as that one's almost just "Virtual USA", with its really cool features to cover super few areas. Seems mostly just like a way for MS to advertise their product than to be usable for many. Ask had much better global road coverage than MSN, and likely at least on par with Google.
  • Deguello, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Slow...and old images...my house does not even sow as being built here yet...it is 3 years old...

    This is not a good sign.
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