Microsoft will be discontinuing two of its mapping products, MapPoint, and Streets & Trips. Both the products snagged their last updates, and are now headed towards their retirement. The demise of the said mapping services comes in favor of Microsoft’s premium mapping product, Bing Maps.
Launched in 1998, MapPoint allowed users to view, edit and integrate maps into other applications including Microsoft Office. While the product was intended for business users, it competes in the low-end geographic information system (GIS) market.
Microsoft Streets & Trips, is a mapping software which is a subset of MapPoint. The product offered several features, chief among them is route planning.
Microsoft has yet to go public with a press release announcing the retirement of these two mapping services, but the Redmond giant has quietly mentioned the fate on both the services’ websites. “Today we announce the end of another era, the discontinuation of Microsoft Streets & Trips. We so appreciate the support of our dedicated users over the years,” Microsoft stated.
Both the services will be available for purchase till the end of 2014.
