Redfin seems to have set off criticism of Microsoft’s VE API. Their reasons for their move are outlined on their blog and many seem to agree with their conclusions about Microsoft’s and Google’s mapping APIs. I’m not sure I agree the VE API is much slower than Google’s, but I suppose if you are hypersensitive you’ll notice the difference. For us it usually is local network conditions that cause one API to be slower than the other, but YYMV.
Vish does a great job of listing what he is missing from the Virtual Earth API. Many ESRI users are exposed to these differences in the ArcGIS JavaScript Extenders for Google Maps and Virtual Earth when they move back and forth between them. I suppose if I had to come out and say which API was our development “standard”, I’d probably go with Google Maps API, but it wouldn’t be enough to call it a preference. The one feature that keeps us coming back to Virtual Earth is the Bird’s Eye imagery which many of our clients just love (planning and architecture seem to gain much from those, much more than street level imagery taken from a car in traffic).
My biggest problem with Virtual Earth is trying to figure out what the heck the “Live” platform is.
