Computers and Internet: Welcome To Devils Workshop!!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Welcome To Devils Workshop!!!

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 03:57 AM PST

Almost everyone who is reading this must have read about Google Maps and used it’s functionalities and features. So I was a little curious to see what exactly did Bing Maps bring to the table. Obviously Bing is trying to capture peoples attention and rival Google which is not very easy. But a casual look at Bing Maps was quite surprising and I found Bing Maps more or less resembled a clone of Google Maps.

Below I am comparing a few features about Bing Maps and Google Maps to show how they are so similar you might mistake one for the other. Bing Maps is still a beta product and has had many recent updates. I did not expect a lot from it and was quite surprised how accurate and detailed it was even when it came to non-US or European cities.

Get Directions

One of the first thing that is similar is when you look at getting directions. Look at the image below and see how similar are the two.
I did a search for directions to drive around in Pune, India between two points. The search were the same on Bing Maps and Google Maps. The results were also pretty much the same.

bingmaps_googlemaps

I expected Bing Maps to show a lot less of Pune, as I thought being new it might have a lot less details about Pune but that was not the case at all.
Both results were accurate and detailed. The appearance of maps, directions and waypoints were eerily similar. At one point I was actually confused if I was using Google Maps or Bing Maps.
Even the Satellite mode of Google Maps is available in Bing Maps as Aerial mode. The options to send and share maps over email are present in both in almost identical ways.
Many people have added their business locations on Google Maps, but that is not the same with Bing Maps and that could be issue at first. I guess in time people might start listing their business addresses on Bing Maps in bigger numbers.

Try out Bing Maps and see how it compare with Google Maps. I still wonder if Microsoft with Bing Maps is indirectly telling us that Google Maps is so perfect they had to copy it function to function. Bing Maps in the form of Live Maps has been around for a while but recent additions have made it a lot like Google Maps.

And you thought Google is not Evil!

Posted: 10 Nov 2009 11:44 PM PST

One thing that caught the imagination of a lot of Google lovers is that Google said that their motto was not to be evil like Microsoft. Google often spoke of the guarding against becoming another Microsoft, which means not to look at ways and means to kill the competition but just outperform them technically.

With a number of Anti-Trust lawsuits against Microsoft for breaking rules to finish off Netscape, “Evil” was a word which became almost synonymous with Microsoft.

Recently Google had become very aggressive with it’s marketing strategy especially when it comes to sponsored links and search related promotions.

I came across a great post by Aaron Wall at Seo Book who has also posted an image of the search results showing how Google has tried to hog all the attention to the extent the organic search results almost do not show.

The image shows that the Organic Listing of links by Google Search hardly shows up with the whole page almost full of either Google Ads, Google Map Promotion Ads and sponsored links.

google-serp-layout

Has Google become Evil?

So what do you think? Has Google become the Evil monster it so religiously tried not to become? Will all large companies become self-serving and become monopolistic? The temptation is huge for Google to try and make someone using their search engine to stay on a Google service or click on advertisement link. Let me know what you think about this with your comments.