Over the past few months, there have been a number of very interesting developments in the search universe.
A few weeks ago, Amazon's a9 gave people an idea where it may be headed with the release of its yellow page search that includes street level images. (Explore it here and learn how they did it).
Now today Google has released a beta version of its own Maps service. At first blush, this might seem little more than a long overdue addition to compete more fully with the combination of Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Maps. That is, until you try it. On first impression, it is simply amazing -- dynamic mapping more like MSN Maps & Directions, but better.
Things are getting interesting....
Addendum: MSN has been touting its new search engine with a series of targeted ads on billboards and transit. Unfortunately as Todd Bishop of the Seattle PI reported earlier this week, its search results for the phrase in the ad copy are worse than either Google or Yahoo! Oops. (via Google Blog)
