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You might already know, the French government has been recently working on a “Google Earth killer” called GeoPortail and they officially released their thing a few days ago.

Apparently their hosting infrastructure was not reliable enough to survive after the announce, so I could not give it a try. But today I did…

Alright, this is still under development as far as I could hear. The UI sucks a lot, but this can be improved. Nevertheless I am very disappointed by the maps quality. They are far, far, far away from Google.

Some screenshots from the place where I live, with Geoportail and with Google Maps. Both with the maximum zoom level.

What makes me mad is that this lame software did cost 6 millions Euros, and of course thanks to the France-living tax payers (including me!).

I blame the French, but did you know that the Belgian federal site did cost at least 22 millions Euros? (they do not even know the real cost…)