Microsoft has renamed its map service again; it’s now called Bing Maps (the bing.com URL isn’t resolving in my browser right now; I may have to check back later).

Interesting that “Virtual Earth” was what they called their enterprise mapping platform and “Live Search Maps” was what they called their consumer mapping platform prior to this change; I don’t ever recall having seen that distinction before.

While it’s good to have a single name to avoid confusion — I never could tell when to call it Virtual Earth and when to call it Live Local or whatever — “Bing” is just a little too precious, I think.

Previously: The Low Profile of Microsoft’s Mapping Effort; New Version of Live Maps.

Update: To be clear, “Bing” seems to be the brand name for Microsoft’s search properties, of which the maps are a constituent part. So when we talk about the maps, we have to call them Bing Maps, not just Bing.