Multimap UK
22 Dec 2010. Multimap UK (multimap.co.uk) was taken over by Microsoft several years ago, but Microsoft already had its own Map software - Bing Maps. For a while, Bing Maps UK lived happily alongside Multimap UK. Only recently, the two platforms have been joined together under the banner of Bing Maps UK.
- Multimap UK was the only serious competition for Google Maps UK, so the product name was retained - for a while - because of brand recognition.
But in 'the rest of the world', Bing Maps became the main Microsoft player, and consolidation factors began to to outweigh brand recognition.
The upshot was that Multimap UK only had a short time to live. Within a few years, by late 2010, Bing Maps UK replaced it. However, because Multimap had a great reputation, UK searchers were still typing multimap into the search engines far more often than bing maps. But the multimap.com pages now only returned soft or hard redirects to bing.com.
Until recently you could find Multimap UK only maps on the websites of many partner companies, including Yellow PagesTM and the RAC. Now some (e.g., the RAC) refer to Bing Maps, others (e.g., Yellow PagesTM) now generate their own maps.
So now is a good time to look for alternatives, and the next section considers some of them. But don't forget Bing Maps UK - it still has many great features.Not Multimap UK only
Multimap UK (now Bing Maps UK) is not the only provider of UK maps. Several other companies provide them, including Google Maps UK, Yahoo Maps UK, Streetmap UK, and MapQuest UK. And don't forget OpenStreetMap, the Wikipedia of map providers. Some of these companies also deliver maps via leading third parties. For instance, Google Maps provides maps for the Automobile Association (AA.)
Features
Unique features of Multimap UK, now carried over into Bing Maps UK, include:
- Ordnance Survey Maps.
- Bird's Eye Views.
- Annotated London Street Maps
- Integration with the RAC
- Some web pages use Multimap UK to show store locations, for example, the Waitrose stores locator.
Bring back Multimap UK?
The web loses something when a good name is ditched. So we'll be keeping this page alive as part of the "bring back Multimap" campaign. After several year in the wilderness, Ask Jeeves is back, so why not Multimap?
