ArcGIS Online Map Services Migrating To Microsoft Virtual Earth/Google Maps Tiling Scheme

At the ESRI Developer Summit 2009 earlier this year, ESRI announced that ArCGIS Online will migrate its map services to the Microsoft Virtual Earth/Google Maps tiling scheme. Not many attendees might have picked up on this news, but in the next update which will come through later this year, the tiling scheme will mimic those of Microsoft and Google.

This change is in response to feedback from many ArcGIS users who have requested that ESRI use a common map tiling scheme matching other popular online map providers. The new services will particularly enable ArcGIS web developers to more easily combine popular web map services with ArcGIS Online map services including those from Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Maps, and other providers that use the same web map tiling scheme.

This major update of ArcGIS Online map services is planned for the third quarter of this year.

A few new map services will be released in advance of the full service migration, which will allow a preview of ArcGIS Online map services in this new tiling scheme. ESRI will continue to host the existing ArcGIS Online map services (e.g., World Street Map, World Imagery, etc.) in their existing ArcGIS Online tiling scheme through Q1 of 2010 in order to give users ample time to migrate their maps and applications to the new services.

With more and more users making use of Microsoft Virtual Earth/Google Maps, this is a good change for the map services on ArcGIS Online. This will make it a lot easier for developers and users to combine map services, not only using ArcGIS but also ArcGIS Server.

This follow up announcement can be found here: http://blogs.esri.com/support/…