← All articles

Virtual Earth – End of Life

Microsoft is retiring Virtual Earth versions 3, 4, and 5 in the coming months. Here's what it means, and why my MapPoint geocoding class is unaffected.

Donn Felker

Donn Felker

2008.07.02 · 1 min read

This week Microsoft announced that their Virtual Earth product versions 3, 4 & 5 will be retired.

As part of our planned deprecation schedule for older versions of Virtual Earth, we will be permanently retiring Virtual Earth version 3, version 4, and version 5 in the coming months. If you are currently using one of these versions, please read this notification and the end-of-life schedule that applies to the version(s) of Virtual Earth you are using. Please note, this Virtual Earth version end-of-life plan only applies to Virtual Earth and does not affect the MapPoint Web Service.

Please note, this does NOT affect the Microsoft Map Point 4.5 Geocoding class that I wrote. This class will continue to do its job. 🙂

Related: Google Maps Geocoding Class

Donn Felker

Written by Donn Felker

I've spent 25+ years shipping software, writing books, and running my own companies. I write about thinking clearly, working for yourself, and doing real work while AI rewrites the rules. New essays land here every week.

Get the newsletter

Keep reading