Ah . . . the wonderful world of maps.  Only Yahoo’s making it more of “a world” (as opposed to just “an America”), and is also making some other improvements - 34 European countries, a pinch of accuracy, and a dash of speed have been added to Yahoo Maps.

Those last two changes are due to a new software platform, developed in-house at the search engine company, according to InfoWorld’s Juan Carlos Perez.  “Yahoo has been using mapping technology from deCarta for over five years,” his report states, but the fresh technology “will perform better, offer more precise results and make backend upgrades easier to implement.”

Just about everyone (who uses Yahoo Maps, that is) should benefit from those changes.  A rather smaller percentage of people will use the driving directions tailored to the 34 European countries.

Still, as a bigmouthmedia article explains, Yahoo is implementing its mapping services wherever it can, “having most recently updated Yahoo! Maps India, in order to gain back market share that has been lost to AOL’s MapQuest service and Google Maps.”  Europe was a logical next step.

Well . . . logical to some.  Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal panned all of the upgrades, joking, “How dare they, I know exactly how to drive around Europe.”  Beal’s steps included:

1.  Get in car.
2.  Point car west.
3.  Keep driving until you find German beer.
4.  Stop.

Actually, as long as your point of origin isn’t Nantes, France, I think those directions’ll do just fine.