Google has announced a new geocoding web service app authors can use to better plot locations on a map.

The new Google Geocoding Web Service includes some enhanced capabilities that not only make it possible for app developers to provide more accurate and granular locations in their apps, but it also lets them increase the performance of their apps through precaching.

First off, the new service employs the Google Maps JavaScript API version 3, which has a handful of improvements over the previous versions. Users will get more well-formed and easier to parse data from each request. The service can return full names as well as local-language abbreviations for countries, states and territories. Users also have the ability to apply multiple tags to each address component.

Second, the new service lets apps precache data. From the announcement on the Geo Developers blog:

The Geocoding Web Service is intended to enable precaching of geocoder results that you know your application will need in future. For example, if your application displays property listings, you can geocode the address of each property, cache the results on your server, and serve these locations to your API application. This ensures that your application does not need to geocode the address of a property every time it is viewed by a user. However we do ask that you regularly refresh your cache of geocoder results.

It’s important to note that the new service must be used in conjunction with a Google Map, generated either by the Google Maps API or the Google Earth API.

Following the steps of Yahoo, Microsoft has also released its thoughts in a statement regarding Google’s new social networking service for Gmail and mobile smartphones, Google Buzz. Echoing the statement by Yahoo, Microsoft says that they also incorporated features from social websites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and 75 other services on Hotmail back in 2008.

Here’s the statement by Microsoft regarding Google Buzz:

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have [benefited] from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

It’s strange that Yahoo and Microsoft have come up so fast and criticized Google. Something tells us that these guys are a bit worried, and they have all the right to be. Microsoft has specially a lot more to worry about, considering the company owns a big part of Facebook. Both companies also know that Google has a big audience and fans behind them.

Besides, ever since rumors about Google Buzz surfaced yesterday, many have been calling the social networking service a “Facebook killer.” Many others have expressed that they wish Google Buzz is better than Facebook, which looks like it is, judging from what we have seen so far.

I do have to agree with Microsoft on this one. Do we really need another social networking service? It’s important to take into account that this is the second social service launched by Google, after the search giant announced and slowly rolled out the epic fail [so far] that is Google Wave last year.

What do you readers think?

With 400 million users, Facebook’s not the only online service doing incredibly well. Group Program Manager for social networking across Windows Live Jeff Kunins has posted some interesting news today with regard to Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger service — 300 million users are now using Windows Live Messenger worldwide.

How ‘worldwide’ are we talking about? The service has penetrated into 76 countries around the globe in 48 different languages including Chinese, Estonian, English, Spanish, German, and Japanese. According to Kunins, Messenger users represent: 65% of all internet users in Brazil, 48% from Canada and Spain; 47% from France; 40% from Italy; and 39% from the UK.

Interesting facts:

• Every month, 163 billion minutes is spent on WLM, or 9.4% of all time consumers spend on the internet around the globe.
• 40%, or 130 million WLM users sign in each day.
• There are a total of 1.5 billion conversations daily, with 9 billion messages transmitted.
• At peak times, nearly 40 million users are signed on.

Windows Live Messenger’s success comes as a surprise to many Americans, considering the service hasn’t exactly been adopted here by many. Instead, we find folks chatting religiously over Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, and AOL Instant Messenger.

[ via Windows Team Blog ]