Windows Live Local debuts - get ready for cool bird's eye views
I just got out of a briefing with Erik Jorgensen, GM of Microsoft's new Search & Mapping group. MSFT announced that it will launch Windows Live Local at local.live.com tomorrow (slated to go live at 9am PST).
Context & Ripple Effects
Windows Live Local goes live at local.live.com tomorrow morning at 9am PST, the first major consumer product out of Microsoft's newly formed Search & Mapping group under GM Erik Jorgensen. It arrives at the end of a bruising 2005 for Microsoft on multiple fronts — the Xbox 360-era company had already moved ahead of Nintendo in Internet-based gaming and outsold Linux in servers per Gartner's November numbers, and now it is taking aim at consumer local search.
The competitive frame matters: as of this week, Microsoft and Google were reportedly in a two-horse race to strike an Internet advertising partnership with Time Warner's AOL unit — a rumor, not a confirmed deal. A visually distinctive consumer mapping property landing mid-contest gives Microsoft something concrete to point at beyond search results pages.
First-order effects
- local.live.com becomes Microsoft's public consumer mapping front door overnight, putting Jorgensen's Search & Mapping group in head-to-head competition with Google in local search, with bird's-eye aerial imagery as the launch differentiator.
- Advertisers gain a new local surface from Microsoft at precisely the moment it is reportedly negotiating with AOL over an advertising partnership (still unconfirmed) — more owned-and-operated inventory strengthens its hand in that pitch.
Second-order effects
- Google now faces pressure to match the aerial-photography layer rather than compete on driving directions alone, pushing imagery collection and licensing toward a recurring cost of doing business in consumer maps.
- Every incremental Live-branded property Microsoft ships widens the surface area available to whatever ad partnership structure emerges from the AOL talks, tying the mapping product's monetization path to that still-open deal.
Third-order effects
- If imagery quality, not routing accuracy, becomes the differentiator consumers notice, web maps stop being a free utility and start being a media surface — making proprietary geospatial data a durable strategic asset in the Microsoft–Google contest.
- Local search consolidates around a small set of platform owners who can afford continuous imagery refreshes, structurally squeezing smaller directory-style local listings businesses out of the visual layer.
The trend: Consumer web mapping in late 2005 is hardening into a front of the Microsoft–Google rivalry, with proprietary aerial imagery displacing driving directions as the battleground.