Amazon.com Maps Show Street Photos

Amazon.com Inc. plans today to become the latest Internet giant to offer a digital mapping service, continuing its quest to become a destination for more than just shopping.

Its maps come from market leader MapQuest, but the online retailer’s service adds a twist: street-level photographs, so travelers can see pictures of the buildings they’re visiting and landmarks along the way.

Amazon’s search-engine subsidiary, A9.com, developed the mapping service, which will compete with offerings from America Online’s MapQuest, Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.

After years of few changes, the online maps landscape is being pushed to new dimensions -- literally -- by Internet giants trying to win Web surfers’ loyalty.

Google and Microsoft Corp. have incorporated aerial photos into their mapping systems. A9.com sent trucks mounted with cameras through big cities, photographing addresses.

A9.com Chief Executive Udi Manber said the photographic database, originally developed for A9.com’s local business directory, featured 35 million images and covers most of 22 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

“Maps are abstractions, two-dimension line drawings of the real world,” he said. “With this technology they can actually see the reality of how [a route] looks.”

The map service, available at maps.a9.com, isn’t integrated with Amazon’s main website but eventually will be, Manber said. It doesn’t have ads yet.

A9.com is struggling to catch up to the big search engines. In June, it was No. 27 in terms of searches executed, with fewer than 0.1% of all search queries on the Web, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Fierce competition in areas such as online maps is driving the next stage of the Internet’s development and will only help consumers, said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Kelsey Group.

“I welcome all these iterations,” he said, referring to one-upmanship of Internet companies. “Ultimately, they’re all going to make the state of mapping better for consumers.”