Yahoo announced recently that they have added global satellite imagery to their beta maps project. The US is covered at 1m per pixel, the world at a minimum of 15m per pixel. Now you can view Tibetan monestaries while at the same time cruising the streets of Phoenix. Even more, their images are blended seamlessly and color-corrected to match each other. This is a huge problem with Google and MSN Maps, which show seams and mismatched colors.

Now, let’s take a look at what Cornell University looks like in all three systems. Comparing or benchmarking these various web 2.0 mapping applications is important. First up is the gross-anatomy, a section of Ithaca at roughly the same zoom level:

Google Maps is already pixelated, chunky, off-color, and generally unreadable. I can tell there’s a lake and urban structure here, but little else.

Windows Live Local shows much greater resolution, but the color is black-and white. There’s also a noticeable contrast change across a stitched section.

Yahoo Maps is beautiful. There’s natural color, no stitching, and good resolution. Let’s take a look at how the three big players handle maximal zoom:

Google can’t get any closer. Its database of images sucks. No high res here!

MSN is very, very clear, but black and white. It’s probably a little better than the Yahoo offering, but the lack of color is quite irritating.

Yahoo has decent resolution and very good color. Although not quite as clear as MSN, here consistency matters more than patches of high-resolution.

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