June 3, 2007

Microsoft and KML support

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Whether or not Microsoft’s Virtual Earth will ever support the KML format is becoming an interesting topic.  Logic would seem to point to “yes”, but that’s not necessarily the case.

This topic was brought up at the “birds of a feather” meeting at Where 2.0 last week (discussed here

).   Their response was not great.

When the subject of KML support was brought up, the speaker from MS was in disbelief.  He said something to the effect of “no, not in our plans”, but had the look of shock that we would ask such an outrageous question – he almost seemed offended that such a topic would be raised at all.  Of course

they won’t support KML.

That being said, I’ve heard from other sources that KML is likely in their plans.  It makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons, but I could see it going either way.  It’s far too hard to share cool places in Virtual Earth, so using KML or some proprietary format to make sharing places easier would be a good move.

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