Just in time for the holidays: Bing rolls out maps for 22 malls,

Just in time for the holidays: Bing rolls out maps for 22 malls

Just in time for the holidays: Bing rolls out maps for 22 malls
--BY John Cook on Friday, December 10, 2010

Bing's new mall map for Lincoln Square >>>

Holiday shoppers who need to find their way around Bellevue Square, Redmond Town Center, Pacific Place and few other Seattle area malls now have a new online tool to use. Bing this week rolled out a new service which pinpoints store locations within malls, telling shoppers exactly where they can find Macy's at Northgate Mall or Crate & Barrel at University Village.

At this point, Bing has unveiled maps for 19 malls in Washington state, two in New York and one in Massachusetts.  Read more...

READ MORE >>

Brian Hendricks, a product manager for Bing Maps, writes in a blog post that the company will be adding maps for other large malls in the near future.

You may recall that Point Inside has been working on mobile mall maps for some time, including applications the for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Could the Seattle startup be working a deal with Bing or Windows Phone 7 related to mall maps?

I tweeted about that possibility earlier this week after Seattle entrepreneur Galen Ward noticed the new Bing Maps implementation for malls.

That prompted this mysterious email from Point Inside's marketing manager Emily Marshall.

"Saw your tweet this morning about our relationship with Bing Maps," Marshall wrote. "We are under NDA and unable to comment at this time."

That certainly would infer a possible partnership of some sorts. But a Microsoft spokesman tells me that the new implementation is not related to anything from Point Inside. "This is something we're doing," he said.

Stay tuned. By the way, here's the mall map for University Village for those who want to find a local store.

A University Village mall map from Bing  >>>>

By John Cook
of Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog