Back in May 2010, Yahoo and Nokia announced a partnership that included making Nokia the exclusive provider for Yahoo maps and navigation. Now the Nokia-powered Yahoo Maps are here, at least in the U.S. and Canada, but they don’t appear to have any advantage over Google Maps.
Greg Sterling discusses his first impressions of the new maps in Powered By Nokia, The New Yahoo Maps Goes Live. And that impression is, well, unimpressed.
First, the data is spotty outside the U.S. and Canada, although he does point out that they haven’t officially launched in other areas.
Second, the search boxes are confusing. This is largely because there are multiple boxes. On the new Yahoo Maps, you can choose either “Find a location” or “Find a business,” which seems redundant.
Third, accuracy is inconsistent. “Find a location” has only one box, making it appear the easier choice, but it is more error-prone than the “Find a business” option. “Find a business” has two boxes, one for the business name or type, and a second box to narrow down the location. That extra location information is apparently critical to getting an accurate map.
Granted, many of the new Yahoo Maps improvements are behind the scenes, so users aren’t aware of them. Unfortunately, it’s the user experience that users care about, and for now it’s not an improvement over Google Maps. On the other hand, Sterling does consider the user experience on Yahoo to be better than that on Nokia Maps.
Hopefully Nokia will work out the bugs soon, because they’ve also partnered with Microsoft to provide data to Bing Maps.
Information in this post gathered in association with a car accident lawyer New York.
