It looks like the battle between Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth might have a winner because the Redmond company's solution was chosen by Maporama as a partner in the detriment of the search giant. Maporama, a company that offers geolocalization and navigation services, was looking for a new solution to enhance its products and websites.

"It has never been so easy for a company to add value to its applications and web sites thanks to these new customized mapping solutions," said Arnaud Gstach, Virtual Earth Business Development Manager for Southern Europe. "Web 2.0 is providing new opportunities and enabling our customers to re-think their solutions by easily integrating next-generation mapping services. Now interactions between maps and data are easy and accessible to all."

As you probably know, the two solutions, Google Earth and Virtual Earth, are somehow similar because they offer almost the same functions, allowing the users to view satellite maps for free. In the recent period, both products were updated but the software giant Microsoft was more interested in the 3D side of its application.

"Thanks to Virtual Earth, the Maporama Intl service offer now includes fundamental mapping data enabling our customers to design new types of applications. Several industries (real estate, tourism, assistance, retail, call centers, banking and insurance) have expressed an interest in multi-dimensional visualization (bird's eye and 3-D views) in additional to traditional mapping", said Danièle Drahy, Director of Operations for Maporama Intl.

At this time, Google Earth is one of the most popular solutions on the Internet, offering revolutionary functions to all the users. The mapping tool was recently updated with a brand new feature that adds interoperability between the stand-alone application and the web-based service Google Maps, helping the users view a certain location straight in the window of their browser.