The ongoing battles among Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have led to new features coming out almost every week. This time, the salvo has been fired by Google Inc.
Upping the ante in the cyber war, Google Inc on Tuesday quietly launched a beta site for US maps.
Google Maps (www.maps.google.com) allow users to find location information, navigate through maps, and get directions.
"Google is not offering anything new. Yahoo has been offering this service for years. But there are some good new features, for example - click and drag maps, instead of having to click and reload and magnified views of specific spots pop up in bubbles which gives this service an edge over others," says Amit Aggarwal, an Internet expert.
However, there are some chinks in the new service. If have found a location and want to save it for future use, the new Google site doesn't offer this facility.
However, Google, defending its product says, "Google Maps is still a beta product in our Google Labs program. But we agree that "Saved Locations" is an important feature, and we're working on providing this as quickly as possible."
But this argument seems to be stretched too far by the Google, considering its news service has been in beta for about two years.
"Most of the Google product are beta," Aggarwal said. "Probably we need to redefine the term beta."