Microsoft Launches Live Map Search In India.

Microsoft has launched its Live Map Search in India as expected it has attracted a lot of interest from the main stream media. When I went to http://maps.live.com/ and I first tried to get a street level view of chennai. 90% of the roads were not represented. I was shocked that Microsoft would release something as shoddy. But a little more digging around revealed that the launched service lives at http://mapindia.live.com. That shows a very different map of chennai from that of http://maps.live.com. Now I can understand if Microsoft felt the need for an India specific domain but the logic behind the decision to have entirely different content for both is something that I have failed to grasp. That said, the launched service is pretty good but there werr some bugs

A restaurant listing I could see on the map disappeared when I zoomed in. (Look for Hotel Suryas at the junction of TTK Road and Eldams Road)
The help says that to get driving directions, you can right click on the map select “Drive From”. But on Firefox 3 on OS X on right clicking nothing happened.
Clicking on the “Send in Email” submenu produced nothing even when I disabled popup blocking.

The first version of the local mapping service for India has been developed by the company’s India Development Centre (IDC) in Hyderabad.Microsoft’s map services will offer detailed listings and street maps for nine cities, business listings across 29 cities and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns.Overall a very good effort from Microsoft. Despite disappearing restaurants Microsoft has a better listing of restaurants and ATMs than Google.

You should follow me on twitter here