Street view mapping capability?

As we all know Microsoft have been playing with ( street view ) mapping and i must say im incredibly impressed! Yes i know its been out for over a year and that A9 had the *block view* technology before hand but still, it is quite incredible of how far technology has come in the few short years. I think it is safe to say that Google will end up going down that route, offering street view mapping. If you have been paying attention to Googles latest roll out of Universal Search, you will see that images on the maps have been made more prominent so its more relevant to the user when searching.

Mapping is becoming the most competitive market on the internet, all of the major providers of maps are now seeing a huge growth with people using the API's.

Ther eseems to be a race between all the big boys such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and MapQuest to develop the most media rich interfaces. One of the most under rated search engines ( Ask.com ) have a pretty cool and innovative system too.