our white picket fence from space
April 12, 2006
I just discovered that Yahoo Maps has way better satellite pics than Google. First off, I can actually see the house, not just green blobs. Plus, it must be a fairly recent pic, as we put in the fence and patio out back in 2004 and you can see those too. Too bad they don’t have the address correct – the house is well to the left of the marker.
To see the difference yourself, check maps for the Michigan Theater:
Yes, Google’s data provider makes the reasonable assumption that high-res pictures of rural areas are not a high priority, but makes the unfortunate assumption that Ann Arbor is not an urbanized area.
Entertainingly, the line is between Ypsi and A2 – in Ypsi, Google is better than Yahoo – you can zoom in further, and the pictures were taken with fewer leaves on the trees. As a randomly selected data point, on Google, and on Yahoo.
Wow! That is a huge difference. I just don’t get why Google doesn’t have that level of detail for Ann Arbor as well. Seems a shame. I’d start a petition or something, but that smacks of effort.
Thanks for the heads-up on Ypsi, though – pretty cool.
(I edited your comment to add the Google link – there was some HTML foo.)
when I discovered keyhole, as a google related product several years ago, it was pc based and awesome. Ann Arbor was high res, frustrating that it is not now.