I've taken a look a Microsoft's competitor to Google Maps several times, and each time I've been struck by the incredibly poor coverage of Canada: Not only is the search completely useless for Canadian addresses (even when you've very clearly indicated that you're looking in Canada, which is odd as they had great data on Canada in ancient MapPoint releases), the hilarity is compounded by the fact that the satellite imagery stops right at the border. Whether it's an imagery rights issue or not, it is quite contrary to the whole "Earth" thing in the product name. Maybe Microsoft Virtual United States of America on Earth is a more accurate name.

Of course Microsoft, being largely an American company, is entirely within its rights focusing on the US marketplace, just as I'm entirely within my rights to complain about it. It seems odd that something like satellite imagery has national boundaries, and it seems more likely that some product manager deep within the intestines of Microsoft decided that the hassle and storage of dealing with Canada wasn't worth the bother, and thus was it wiped from the map. A bit of a foolish decision given that there's a fair number of us, and given that it's cold most of the year we all tend to have high speed connections and predisposition to spending lots of time online.