Here's a product that will give Google Maps a run for its money. MSN Virtual Earth is Microsoft's answer to the Google equivalent. The setup is fairly similar, although MSN Virtual Earth appears to offer quite a few more built-in services than Google Maps currently does.

For starters, there is more map data than Google's version has, covering locations across the globe. The maps are also provided by NASA, which is good and bad. The good part is that the zoomed-out maps seem to be smoother and more and more consistent in lighting and other details. The bad part is that the images are worse zoomed-in. The images are often grayscale and harder to make out. Considering that the zoomed-in view is usually what is most important, this certainly isn't a good thing.

But MSN Virtual Earth offers some really neat features that Google Maps doesn't yet have. The first I noticed was a Locate me feature, which uses either an ActiveX component (although I wouldn't touch ActiveX with a ten-foot pole) or your IP address to determine your geographical location, and then it zoomed to that place. It worked very much as expected for me. MSN Virtual Earth also offers some other gadgets you often see in Google Map hacks, like bookstore locations and pharmacies.

All-in-all, I think this is a quality service Microsoft has made. Like Google Maps, it appears that MSN Virtual Earth offers an API for third party developers to work with. I wouldn't say MSN Virtual Earth is better than Google Maps, nor would I say that it's worse. I guess we'll see how things develop.