Amazon swings into the map market

Amazon.com is merging photographs and maps in a new location-based search service that will allow users to take virtual tours of more than 22 US cities.

The company's A9 search subsidiary is expected on Tuesday to launch a beta of its new A9.com Maps service, which lets users see street-level photos of addresses as well as get map-based driving directions.

Interactive maps with A9's Block View technology are integrated into one interface by the service. The Block View technology offers a series of photos of both sides of each street, taken by roving picture-snapping trucks equipped with digital cameras and GPS receivers. The photos, of which there are about 35 million, are currently used in Amazon's Yellow Pages search to show snapshots of businesses alongside addresses and phone numbers for merchant searches.

The new A9.com Maps service allows users to easily get driving directions by selecting starting and destination points on the map. It also shows photos of locations corresponding to points on the map clicked with the cursor. Instead of having to type in addresses, users can click on the map and the corresponding address will pop up.

The service also allows for easy navigation by using a zoom function, and shows which roads have had street-level photos taken.

So far, only one photo has been taken of most addresses, although images for the San Francisco Bay Area are refreshed for testing purposes, said A9 chief executive Udi Manber. The company has not decided how often it will update the photos, he said.

"We're helping people find things," he said of the new service. "We're making the map a little less abstract; a little more like reality."

The company has worked with privacy advocates to assuage their concerns and has received "few complaints, if any" since it launched the Block View technology six months ago, Manber said. A9 has had only one request to remove an image and complied with that request, he added.

Amazon, Google, MSN and Yahoo! are in a heated race to provide the best maps and location-based searching tools on the web. Last month, MSN launched its Virtual Earth test site, and Google released a "hybrid" site of its own that lets people see an aerial view of a location with superimposed road maps.

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com