Embracing Real Life in Virtual Earth
Microsoft announces 21 winners of the Virtual Earth and SensorMap Request for Proposal programs with funding totaling US$1.1 million to help academic researchers innovate in advanced mapping and location-based search technologies.
Context & Ripple Effects
This grant announcement is the third move in a short sequence by which Microsoft has been building out Virtual Earth beyond a consumer map product. On March 6, Microsoft Research showcased more than 100 innovations for future computing, and on March 28 the company announced a partnership with InfoNow aimed at helping people find businesses through location-aware search.
The $1.1 million across 21 winners of the Virtual Earth and SensorMap RFPs extends that buildout into academia: rather than developing advanced mapping and sensor-driven search solely in-house, Microsoft is paying university researchers to experiment on top of its platform.
First-order effects
- Twenty-one academic research teams receive direct funding under the two RFP programs, gaining resources to pursue advanced mapping and location-based search work built on Virtual Earth and SensorMap.
- SensorMap in particular gets a seeded research community around its premise of blending real-world sensor data into virtual maps, deepening the platform's technical base at low cost to Microsoft.
Second-order effects
- Commercial partners like InfoNow stand to benefit downstream if the funded academic work yields location-search techniques that Microsoft folds back into Virtual Earth's business-finding capabilities.
- Rival mapping and local-search providers face a competitor that is cultivating an academic talent pipeline around its own APIs, raising the bar for ecosystem-building rather than just product features.
Third-order effects
- If vendor-funded academic RFPs become a standing mechanism, mapping platforms will consolidate around whoever hosts the research community — shifting competition from data quality alone to developer-and-researcher ecosystems layered over proprietary geodata.
The trend: Web mapping is moving from static products toward platform ecosystems, with vendors like Microsoft using targeted academic funding to seed the next generation of location-based services.