There’s no other way to say it: when it come to street-level navigation, Microsoft’s Street Slide is a vast improvement over Google Maps. Microsoft needs to release this to the public pronto, period.

Am I the only one who feels like clicking up and down the street with Google Maps in the ’street view’ perspective is akin to a drunken stumble looking for an ATM? I’m limited to a series of shortsighted views, each of which regenerate individually. It’s clumsy, slow and ripe to be improved upon.

What if there were another sort of interim view that made it very easy to search several blocks quickly then flip right back into a view of a specific address or storefront?

Rather than lurching up and down virtual streets looking for something, Street Slide lets searchers navigate a whole street from a panorama, with signs and logos for businesses positioned below the view to facilitate the search. It’s intuitive and simple. The video below is amazing.

Microsoft has often been slow to move interesting, useful innovations out of the lab. It’s a shame to have the tech but not be smart or nimble enough on the business side to aggressively push things into the real world, a la Google’s constant and relentless ‘beta release’ model. I’m sure it’s really, really hard to release new tech, but It’s what businesses do, and if it’s prohibitively difficult for Microsoft then it has to be made easier. To often they do what Detroit does: show me concepts that pique my interest, then follow through much later, if at all. No doubt tooling up for release of an application is expensive, but it can’t compare to that for a new car model, and Microsoft is awash with money looking for good ideas.

Not only does Street Slide pose a real challenge to Google Maps and other online mapping applications, it would help redefine the company as a force for innovation in the minds of a public that has grown skeptical.