• by Shankar Gupta , October 7, 2005

Search giant Google Thursday officially launched Google Local out of beta and merged the local search engine with its mapping product, Google Maps.

The addition of mapping to local search makes the feature look very much like MSN's Virtual Earth, said Greg Sterling, an analyst with the Kelsey Group. "MSN Virtual Earth and Google Local now look very similar. In terms of how does this position them, I think that they occupy more or less the same position they did before," he said.

He added that integrating maps and local search was a natural move. "Obviously, it makes sense for them to do that. Maps have been popular, local has been popular," he said. "The old Local didn't feed to the Maps in the way that the new one does. They haven't done anything shocking--this is a nice integrating of the two."

Yahoo!'s local search engine is still superior to MSN's or Google's because Yahoo! solicits reviews of local businesses from its users, Kelsey said. "I think that Yahoo! is trying to differentiate on the basis of user-generated content, which right now isn't being exercised by Google and MSN," he said.