Beating at their own game... or should I say thought?

Microsoft yesterday launched a new product called Virtual Earth, which is being called as Microsoft's answer to Google Maps (which by the way is very impressive). Virtual Earth is still not available on Microsoft's website, only in some forums. No definitive information yet. But they are late, very late. Google has launched another product called Google Earth which while working off the internet is desktop application working without browser and can find almost anything on this earth, literally and its much more detailed than Google maps and has animation / movements that give a very great feeling. This picture is captured while the earth is moving towards you and it feels great. Searching the Earth for addresses gives great details and here is where I live. But that's not the point . Microsoft plans to add Local Search in it very soon which will allow a person to search places of interests like restaurants near his / her area. According to Computerworld columnist Elizabeth Montalbano - "Local search has been a gaping hole in the MSN search engine. In addition to Google, major search-engine providers Yahoo Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc. and America Online Inc. also have local search tabs on their search Web sites.

Local searching is becoming increasingly popular with users and online advertisers. It lets users find business listings and complementary information from a specific geographical area, while advertisers are able to aim their ads at those who are looking for services and products in their vicinity."

In his best selling book "Business @ the speed of thought" Microsoft chariman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates talks exactly about this. I don't have the copy of the book with me now, but I read it and I thought it made perfect sense for local businesses to have targetted advertising rather than general advertising where the hit rate is very poor. So if their CSA had this idea so long back, why is it that Microsoft never developed this product? According to me Microsoft is not a market leader. It is a fierce competitor. It waits for someone to develop an idea and then jump on that and develop it. They are good at developing and taking forward others' idea and so good that it appears their own idea to common folks (Remember the Mac like interface? Office suite is a improved version of Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Visio was purchased and so on an so forth). Is Microsoft afraid of developing new products for fear of failure? Nobody would like to admit it, but I guess that is what appears.

Any thoughts?