Anything Microsoft can do, we can (try and) do better - at least that appears to be an unwritten motto at Google when it comes to some of the things it is trying.
At one end of the scale some might suggest Google's move into travel search (via the ITA Software acquisition and subsequent launch of Flight Search and continued roll-out of Hotel Finder) followed Microsoft's purchase and integration of Farecast into Bing.
And now Google, two years after Microsoft, has worked out a way of stitching together some of the user generated photos it has collected through Panoramio and Picasa to create 3D-lite image tours of destinations and attractions around the world.
Microsoft had a ready-made method of doing it, through its cutting edge (at the time) PhotoSynth technology, now Google has produced something similar.
Users (only on GL-enabled Google Maps) can now zoom in on certain destinations on the service and be given a tour by way of images streamed in and smartly placed together to give more than one view.
Here is a clip: