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Re:Cutting Google out of your life (2019) by WorldMaker on Monday January 06, 2020 @06:24PM (#21974695)
Bing Maps has a street view equivalent that covers most cities, at least in the US somewhere close to a margin of error difference to Google in terms of cities covered.

In fewer cities and increasingly hard to find in the interface (because a lot of it is growing out of date, and it is in general more rare than Street View), Bing Maps also has a really cool best of both worlds "Bird's Eye view" taken from helicopters in daylight at a particular distance and an isometric-esque angle chosen to provide a strong amount of detail. I've found that be extremely useful for picking up a neighborhood-worth of landmarks in a glance for navigating a space by foot or car. It really is a shame Microsoft/Bing stopped advertising it so heavily as a competitive advantage and have let its prominence in the UI disappear to the point where finding it is a labyrinthine task, but unlike the mythical minotaur, I know it still exists (for now).

I don't know what to do about YouTube. I keep hoping that they've made the non-Premium experience so bad that enough of the people I follow might move to better platforms, but so far network effects win again.

Re:Cutting Google out of your life (2019) by jlarocco on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @07:53PM (#21997454)
I do like Bing's "Bird's Eye View", but I have to disagree about their Street View coverage.

Here in Colorado, for example, Bing Maps doesn't cover anything in the western half of the state, not even larger cities along the interstate, like Grand Junction. Meanwhile, Google has Streetview imagery for practically every paved road in the state, and even a lot of forest service roads in the middle of the mountains. I know that's not a big deal for most people, but it's a huge use case for me to help plan bike trips.

And Bing doesn't cover much, if anything, outside of the US.