A comparison of Eniro’s and Google’s mapping innovations
Last week the large Danish search, map and media company, Eniro, launched Streetview in Denmark, but only in the three largest cities, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense. Today, only a few days later, Google launches Streetview in the entire country – as well as in most of the Netherlands and the southern and northern parts of Sweden.
Street view
If we look at availability, Google clearly wins as they cover the entire country, not just selected cities. If we look at usability, Google actually wins as well, as they overlay the names and directions of the street in the view with the ability to “walk” in either direction of any street present. Eniro only shows the photo with the same panning and zooming options, but if you want to walk down the street, you must either double-click (as both parties have the surface indicators) or use the mini-map. The mini-map also works much better in Google’s version in my opinion.
But if we look at image quality of the street views, Eniro’s is much better. Google often have fussy images and they do not always align very well. Eniro’s mapping has been done by C3 Tecnnologies, a Swedish SAAB-spinoff company. They clearly do a better job at providing seamless, crisp photos compared to Google’s as can be seen on the photos to the right. (both of my street).
But as always, funny images are quickly found, and tweets about this poor guy soon appeared on Twitter and since in a Danish tabloid magazine.
Tilted aerial photos
Some time ago Eniro launched another innovation: tilted aerial photos of Denmark, which actually gave a much better understanding of some parts of the mapped areas – like this view of one of the main squares in Copenhagen They launched this in August 2008, but has some shortcomings. Firstly, it has only been done in the 19 of the largest cities. Secondly, it is “just” large, high-resolution images that are not directly connectible, so when you pan around, you will soon find yourself at the edge of an image and when going over the edge, it will “clip” to a new image.
But Google are testing out similar techniques (though only launched in San Diego and San Jose so far). And they went a little further, as they do try to provide connectible images from all corners of the world (4 directions, whereas Eniro’s only have 1 – most of the time from either east or south). Furthermore, they have made sure that this view integrates perfectly with KML‘s, route planning etc. See this test page done by Peter Brodersen.
In conclusion…
I find it very refreshing, that someone actually tries to battle Google’s dominance in the web map area, and that they have actually made sure to improve, where Google is lacking (as with the image quality). I however fear, that they won’t win enough market share to become an actual contender.
Related posts: