Online Mapping Services Reviewed

Walter S. Mossberg, technology writer for the Wall Street Journal recently reviewed the mapping services of Mapquest, Google Local, and Yahoo Maps, in a recent article.

Mossberg's observations:

These newer sites are free, like MapQuest, but they offer some fancy features, like the ability to pan across a map simply by moving your mouse's cursor, or zooming in or out on a location quickly. Google adds satellite photos of the actual locations, down to the trees in your front yard.

MapQuest looks a little dowdy by comparison to the newcomers, but it works for a lot of folks because it gets people from point A to point B, without any extra fuss. So, we tested these new features from Google and Yahoo to see if they were actually useful, or just a lot of hype that muddied up the direction-retrieval process.

Mossberg's review, which focused on the accuracy and usefulness of driving directions more than anything concluded:

Overall, we concluded that, for the sake of getting where you're going with the most-thorough directions, MapQuest still does the best job, with the most accurate directions. But Yahoo has a multipoint routing feature that's valuable. And, for some, the ability to quickly pan a geographic region on Yahoo and Google -- with satellite photos on the latter -- can familiarize them with the surrounding area and make the drive easier

Of course, regular map blogger will recall that Cartography recently reviewed seven different online map sites.