Is it just me or is the satellite coverage of the UK (and most of Europe) much darker on Yahoo/Microsoft than it is on Google?

The best resolution – also sucks.

yeah, you can't zoom in nearly as far. and a lot of areas have B&W low res arial pics i've noticed, Just playing catch-up and doing a bad job.

but the higher res images are more abundant for the U.S. than anywhere else. even small, low populated regions where Google doesn't show a zoomed in image Yahoo has it. i think they put more money buying high res images for U.S. for their beta. also IMO it's pretty much a rip off of Google Maps. pretty sad to me. at least MS engineered theirs from scratch. the Google Maps Team probably has something brewing in the labs though....

Yahoo's beta map is uninteresting to me because its just following Google. Yahoo is not getting better where it matters – so what if there is satellite. I would use Yahoo maps without it. The only reason it was a big deal with google is because overall they started something new in the map world. At least MS added there own unique twist. If Yahoo made major improvements to Yahoo Finance, or Yahoo Search that would be far more interesting and useful to users than placing satellite imagery on maps. if they think they have beaten google with this, then they wasted their time and energy.

At first I was eager to see how Google maps would be growing. But now I look yahoo & microsoft with more impatience.

Check out this Google map:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=49.809632,6.70166&spn=4.239466,14.040527

vs. Yahoo map :
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/#maxp=search&trf=0&mvt=m&lon=8.338623046875&lat=50.1980012538564&mag=12

and vs Live.com map:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=51.517915~7.296836&style=r&lvl=6

Can you see a difference here?

   Its kind of odd....I use a x64 machine witha beta 64 bit mozilla browser...it doesnt currenty run flash. And wont run the site.... is the web site flash based??? kinda lame

Yes, it's flash based, so is the yahoo mail beta but why lame? Flash is so popular, so it's your problem not to use it, lol. The problem I noticed was yahoo maps and mail beta are slower than google's. I guess google either has more servers or has their servers better architectured.

If it's using Flash 8 then it's Windows-only...

What it does have, as is obvious from flyapple's comparison links, is better map data available internationally. Whereas G only shows "Germany", Y shows a plethora of cities, and M shows even more cities, roads, etc.

For satellite imagery, I'd echo that the rural imagery is better-res in Y than in G. Try looking at Stacy, MN in G, and then in Y beta ... the imagery is available at higher resolution and is sharp in Y, compared to fuzzy, low-res aerial in G.

You are right. It is about time that Google added *at least* the rest of Europe to their maps. And I would like some bonus features like the ability to do "vias" for journeys.

Ok, something's seriously wrong here, I tried finding my apartment and ended up in Riyadh.