Having learned from Google's mistakes with Street View, Microsoft is laying the groundwork for mobile and location-based services.



From InformationWeek:

Launched in the U.S. in late 2009 as a Bing Maps Beta feature, Streetside has avoided the controversy stirred up by Google Street View, which debuted in mid-2007.

We spoke with Chris Sather, Product Management for Network Defense at McAfee about McAfee's next generation firewalls that analyze relationships and not protocols.
Google was slow to realize the extent to which privacy concerns would hobble its ability to innovate. The company has had to deal with incidents in which one Street View driver drove onto a military base in Texas and another found his route blocked by suspicious villagers in the UK. It has had to block faces and licenses plates and to convince governments not to ban Street View. It has had to re-shoot Street View imagery when authorities in Japan objected to cameras positioned high enough to see into homeowners' fenced yards.

  Microsoft Readies Streetside In Europe