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For the last couple of years, readers of this blog and those of you who see me present at events have heard me highlight Microsoft's high-resolution aerial imagery as a competitive advantage over the satellite imagery that is predominant in our competitor's platform.

This morning DigitalGlobe announced a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to provide Virtual Earth with premium imagery content.
So now I will go on record and say that now adding DigitalGlobe satellite imagery is a good thing for Virtual Earth users. The aerial imagery found in Virtual Earth is still higher in resolution and is crisp and clear, but this agreement will significantly expand Virtual Earth’s breadth of international coverage including cities and leisure areas in APAC; the Americas, Middle East and Africa and Eastern Europe.*

The imagery, which will come from DigitialGlobe's QuickBird (.6m) satellite and the first of two next-generation Digital globe satellites, WorldView-1 (.5m), will began appearing in Virtual Earth in early 2009 and will feature DigitalGlobe metadata necessary to support Virtual Earth’s imagery metadata access feature. Supplemental DigitalGlobe updates will be incorporated into Virtual Earth’s monthly coverage release cycle.

How does this imagery compare to the DigitalGlobe imagery found in our competitor's offering?* In contrast to their raw DigitalGlobe imagery, Microsoft content will be rectified and mosaicked. This will result in greater overall consistency, definition and clarity.

This agreement is another example of Microsoft's commitment to provide the best imagery and the best coverage for an international user base.



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