We don’t hear as much about Bing Maps imagery updates as we did in the old days when Chris Pendleton gave us regular updates on the Bing Maps blog, but the Bing Maps team is still hard at work updating and expanding Bird’s Eye imagery and Streetside coverage. A new post today on the Bing Maps blog shows a nice overview of the ever expanding coverage of Bird’s Eye images:
Bing Maps Bird’s Eye imagery now covers over 2.2 million sq km of area around the world, focused as you can see in North America and Western Europe. There’s lots of new imagery for London, with the upcoming Olympics (here’s the London Olympic Park in Bird’s Eye) quickly approaching, as well as lots of points of interest, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Navy Pier in Chicago, and the Spanish Steps in Rome.
Bing Maps has been busy adding to Streetside imagery, too, adding an additional 125k km for a total of 365,000 linear kilometers of ground level viewing.
We’re still waiting to hear just how Microsoft and Nokia will evolve their mapping strategies, as Microsoft currently licenses Navteq information from Nokia and they both maintain separate mapping products. In January, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop hinted that a Bing-Maps-to-Nokia rebrand may be on the way, and the two companies announced a unified map design in late February. But for now, at least, it looks like Bing Maps isn’t slowing down any in producing new Bird’s Eye and Streetside imagery.