Holy Cow!
Google made a smashing announcement today and provided some nice frameworks and examples to play with: Google earth in full 3D in your browser nicely integrated with google maps.
Really: this is going to be huge!
did you see those examples?

I planned a trip to Paris a few days ago and already Google Maps proved to contain about everything you need to do some decent geo-planning, imagine the possibilities when you have that in 3D, especially with the 3D models of some major cities available.

OK, this is it ... Google most definitely has won the maps-war: time to focus on something else MS and yahoo ... (update, or not ?)
Heck, on my mobile I don't even bother to open up tom-tom sometimes: last week we were looking for a specific store. When I looked it up in Google Mobile, it instantly asked if I wanted a map with driving directions: Hell yes!
5 seconds later we were on our way ...

Small update: Oh smack ....
I checked out Microsoft Virtual Earth again, and I must say: not too bad also! The birds eye view on http://maps.live.com/ is really nice and more important: if you have Virtual earth 3D installed, the 3D view is also integrated in the browser !
Dang - Why didn't I know this? looks pretty sweet also, but at first sight it doesn't seem to have the same open API then Google does. AND is also has a very extensive SDK: hmmm ... looks even a tad better :-)
Sigh, if I only had time to check these things out more thorough :-)