Attn: Microsoft/Bing/Live/Whatever… you dumb-arses.

If I look at Google Maps, get a great view in the map or the satellite view or Streetview or whatever, I can get a link for that precise view that I can send somebody or embed into a web page for people to look at and browse around in it.

I love the Bird’s Eye view in Live Maps, but… Oh looky, it’s a Share link. But all that gives me is the URL for the original search I did. And it’s broken.

For instance, if I search for:

swanston and flinders streets, melbourne, vic, au

I get the spot I was looking for, outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. Cool.

Then I can switch to Bird’s Eve view. Nice. Zoom in, rotate so I can see the steps. Gorgeous!

So I want to share it with my friends. Click Share to get the URL for it. It gives me this:

http://maps.live.com.au/index.aspx?action=location&location=swanston%20and%20flinders%20streets%2C%20melbourne%2C%20vic%2C%20au

Try it. Go on, click it, see what you get.

See the problem?

Not only does this go to a standard map, ignoring that I switched to Bird’s Eye view, zoomed, rotated, etc.

Not only that… but it somewhere along the way it chops out the commas from my original query, and which causes the Live Maps parser to take me to somewhere else… to be precise, it takes me to the corner of Swanston and Flinders Street in Bulleen, a suburb in Melbourne’s northeast!

Bing/Live Maps FAIL.