Speaking of the Microsoft-Google Game of Internet Risk, Bing Adds More Square Kilometers in Maps

In one of the more interesting battlefields of the multifront war between Google and Microsoft, Bing Maps today added what it calls its “largest imagery update to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery.”

That includes the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the United States where there is existing black-and-white imagery, as well as bird’s-eye imagery for Sweden.

The ongoing innovations to online mapping by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have been a boon to consumers, who are getting increasingly cool and substantive looks at our world.

In February, Microsoft debuted a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing one-upmanship with Google with a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings.

Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.

Google Maps is also not resting, adding a series of features over the last months from Google Goggles (which takes pictures of an object or location and then identifies it via search) to spoken, turn-by-turn directions on its Android-powered smartphones.

I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next from these archrivals.

Here’s Microsoft’s blog on the improvements:

March 05, 2010, 09:00 AM by Chris Pendleton

Last month we pushed out our largest amount of new imagery EVER in terms of square kilometers. This month, we’re blowing THAT record out of the water. You thought 1 million+ sq. km. was large? How about 6.7 million square kilometers! It’s pretty much unfathomable. The big winners? Aerial: The Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where we had black and white imagery. Bird’s Eye: Sweden. Deets:

Aerial

Australia 524,645 sq. km.
Botswana 61,433 sq. km.
Estonia 618 sq. km.
Hungary 3,369 sq. km.
Mexico 236,624 sq. km.
Morocco 13,303 sq. km.
Namibia 72,162 sq. km.
New Zealand 14,987 sq. km.
Poland 6,254 sq. km.
Romania 3,695 sq. km.
Russian Federation 553,244 sq. km.
South Africa 123,138 sq. km.
Turkey 16,148 sq. km.
United Kingdom 15,221 sq. km.
United States 4,961,758 sq. km.

Oblique (Bird’s Eye)

Austria 238 sq. km.
Belgium 898 sq. km.
Denmark 718 sq. km.
Finland 1,634 sq. km.
France 2,001 sq. km.
Greece 931 sq. km.
Ireland 1,340 sq. km.
Netherlands 1,709 sq. km.
Norway 2,425 sq. km.
Portugal 2,184 sq. km.
Romania 1,534 sq. km.
Spain 5,143 sq. km.
Sweden 6,747 sq. km.
Switzerland 424 sq. km.
United Kingdom 13,094 sq. km.
United States 56,007 sq. km.

Check out the Bing Maps World Tour for visuals. Also, Johannes has a sweet application for viewing imagery based on shape files. Niiiice.

CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton