Live Search Maps by Microsoft India

Microsoft India has launched Live Search Maps for India that offers users access to detailed listings and street maps for nine cities, business listings across 29 cities and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns. Live Search Maps for India is on Microsoft’s Live Search Service, thereby allowing users to search for geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and the mobile.
This is the first version of its local mapping service for India with the key features developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) based in Hyderabad.

Speaking on the launch, Rishi Srivastava, head, consumer and online marketing operations, Microsoft India, said, “We are proud to launch Live Search Maps for users in our country. This is the first version of Live Search Maps for India, and Microsoft will continue to introduce new features and improvements in the near future to meet emerging needs of consumers. Over the last two years, Microsoft has made significant investments into research and development for Live Search, acquired global resources and introduced several new features which we believe are extremely relevant and will deliver great value to our users.”

“After recent innovations for Live Search such as image search, video search, local search, xRank and instant answers, we have rolled out Live Search Maps on our search platform to enable people to learn, discover and explore specific locations in India,” added Srivastava.

Several key innovations and features of Live Search Maps India were developed at MSIDC based on their research and understanding of the search needs of users in India. It leverages the Live Search Maps for India to deliver 2D mobile maps, location search and driving directions and supports adaptive rendering for results from Web, news, instant answers and spaces search.

“In the near future, we plan to add new features such as landmark-based driving directions, collections search, options for enterprise customers and developer community to create custom mash-ups, along with satellite imagery and related features for India and key cities,” said Gurpreet S. Pall, general manager, Live Search and MSN Technologies, Microsoft India Development Centre.

Live Search Maps India is powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, draws information through multiple local vendor sources such as NavTeq and uses Government of India approved data.