redfin.com Switches from Microsoft to Google
December 14, 2008 by Emma Sorensen
Online real estate broker redfin.com has released a new version of their website.
The updates include tweaks like making the neighbourhood pages more discoverable.
One of the biggest changes is the maps. They have made the decision to stop using Microsoft Virtual Earth, and have switched to Google Maps.
On the corporate blog the company says:
“We decided to do this now because our two-year contract with Microsoft was up for renewal. We did an evaluation and figured out a way to draw a large number of pushpins on GMaps very quickly. When we went with VE in 2006, GMaps was faster out of the box but slower once we started drawing on it, especially on IE6.”
“We really only have good things to say about VE. Anyone looking to build a map-based Web 2.0 site has two solid choices.”
“In the end, it was speed, speed, speed that convinced us to switch. In our worst case scenario of 500 pushpins on the map in IE6, GMaps is 385% faster.”
With maps now an integral feature of the property search experience, property portals have a choice between several providers – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, MapQuest, and more.
The Future of Real Estate Marketing blog did a quick analysis of the Hitwise top real estate websites and found that four of them use Virtual Earth (realtor.com, zillow.com, ziprealty.com and realtytrac.com), compared to three using Google (trulia.com, homegain.com and remax.com). Yahoo! Real Estate was the only one using Yahoo! maps, and rent.com uses MapQuest.
redfin.com also says a more major release is in the pipeline from the company early next year, so stay tuned.
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[...] also released a new version of their website including Google maps in December 2008, after cutting prices and [...]