France Launches Positioning Website

The battle for localization positioning and Map search services entered a new phase with the arrival of the new website http://www.geoportail.fr. While Internet giants like Microsoft and Google have been slugging it out in this arena for a while with their Google Maps and Microsoft Live Maps services, this is the first time a country directly has entered into this nascent market. France on Friday unveiled a Web site http://www.geoportail.fr that allows people to access detailed satellite images of the country. The maps are said to be more detailed than the ones on Google Earth.

President Jacques Chirac has often stressed the need for France to have such a site, which will allow casual users access to aerial photos and maps. He was quoted as saying, “With Galileo, with the mobile telephone and various services linked to global positioning, it will develop a lot. It is also about democracy because our citizens have the right to know all the facts about the environment.”