Windows Live Local Vs. Google LocalWindows Live Local Vs. Google Local

Microsoft has launched Windows Live Local in beta to try to catch up to Google Local. Check it out. It does some neat tricks, but it's sort of like a cocker spaniel: after you've been through what it can do a few times you find yourself focusing on what it can't do. Of course, I've got to admit, I was wowed by Google Local when it first came out, but it's basically a cocker spaniel, too. In fact, the two services are pretty much separated only by an IQ point here and and an IQ point there.Microsoft gets several points for the imagery it uses. When I enter my home address I don't just see the outline of the roof of my house in a grainy satellite photo, I get to choose from among low-level aerial shots taken from several directions. Cool. But Windows Live Local loses points for a confusing selection interface that, unless I've lost my sense of direction makes me click on West to get a view to the East.

More points off because the cool low-level aerial photography isn't available for the entire United States. My house in suburban Boston is shot from almost as many angles as Jessica Simpson at a Hollywood premiere, but my parents' house in Indiana? Sorry, no images available -- not even old grainy satellite ones.

Another problem: I can see a cool low-level aerial view of my son's house in California, but the little marker that indicates his house is off by half a block.

But wait, that's curious. Google Local is off by exactly the same half a block. Maybe I should call my son and see if he's moved.

The same sort of curious coincidences dog the advertising that shows up. When I ask for the drug stores closest to my house, both services display almost identical lists. Points to Microsoft because it finally comes up with the Brooks Pharmacy that Google doesn't seem to know about. But points off of both of them because "drug store," "drugstore," "drug stores," and "drugstores" each produce wildly different lists of results. And I'm reminded that this is all advertising, after all, when I ask for "Bank of America" -- Windows Live Local never heard of it. Google knows them all.

(BTW, we're going to have to find some shorthand name for all these Windows Live thingamabobs Microsoft is popping out. I suggest we prepend "WinL" to whatever product name they get, so we can call it WinLLocal, for example.)

All this cocker spaniel stuff is fun and games, but the real success of Google Local has been the fact that it has an open API, and smart people have developed cool applications that use the maps and images to display all kinds of things. "Open" is a word Microsoft speaks only through clenched teeth. We'll see if it wants success badly enough to abandon its principles and actually let smart people do cool things with WinlLocal, or if it's just another one of Microsoft's me-too demonstration projects.