Microsoft has switched its UK mapping from it’s in-house Live Maps product to Multimap, the 11-year-old UK online mapping company it bought last December for a rumoured $50 million.
However, the switch is not going down well with users.
On the Virtual Earth blog, former Live Map users are expressing themselves somewhat… well… shall we say… forcefully?
Here are some of the comments so far:
• I’ve found it hard to choose between Google Maps and Live Earth in the recent past, but this is pushing me back towards Google Maps…
• This is very poor, and really alienates users in the UK, particularly when you’re shouting so loudly about all the great new features – that we can’t now get! Not only that, but features that were previously abvailable even before this announcment, are not present in MultiMap. To make matters worse, links no longer work for us, and our collections are .. where exactly?…
• Please thank whoever made the decision to switch UK users over to Multimap as I’ve got to spend the day updating links on about 20 of my clients web site that I convinced to use Live Maps – why? Because none of the links work any more. So, who should I use now? Google? Yahoo? Because I’m not using Multimap and its dated system….
• I was a big fan and convinced many to switch to live maps (UK). I have now gone back to google maps and suspect most will….
• Surely this is a bad hangover from April Fools Day? I couldn’t quite believe it when repeatedly redirected to Multimap’s crowded, unfriendly and frankly dated interface. The Live Maps zoom facility alone is worth more than this decrepit excuse for a mapping utility. So long Live Maps, hello Google….