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is testi ng a mapping service that will display street-level photos of the city b locks surrounding a requested address. com service, which became available Monday, joins the increasingly crowded field of online mapping. A9 is counting on an index of 35 million photographs spanning the neighbo rhoods of 22 US cities to distinguish its mapping service from the res t of the pack. The Palo Alto-based search engine first began to post street-level photog raphs of specific addresses earlier this year as part of its Yellow Page s listings. The new service extends that feature by posting photographs of entire cit y blocks alongside a traditional map showing a grid of streets. A9 believes the street-level photos will provide a more helpful view than a recent Google mapping upgrade that provides a satellite eye's view of neighborhoods. "We're making maps slightly less abstract and closer to the real world," said Udi Manber, A9's chief executive. When a user asks for driving directions on A9, the service also will prov ide photos of all the businesses along the recommended route, provided t he images are stored in the search engine's index. The index already has added about 15 million more pictures since the Janu ary debut of the Yellow Pages service. Amazon has been building the inde x by dispatching trucks equipped with digital cameras and global positio ning system, or GPS, receivers. Even though it's backed by an Internet heavyweight, the nearly 2-year-old A9 remains a relative lightweight in the lucrative search engine indust ry. In June, A9 processed just 49 million search requests, ranking it 2 7th among Internet search engines with a US market share of 01 percen t, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
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