Played around with the new and improved Yahoo Maps and must say it is very slick. Yahoo has done a very nice job of integrating local data with their maps – unlike Google Maps where you have to first search for businesses to have them show up on the map (this search typically produces a lot of garbage), Yahoo has a nice browse feature which lets you get to the popular businesses really quickly (and the data quality is very good). Performance also seems quite good – I even switched to satellite mode and the transition happened fairly quick.
I guess the next round of map wars is officially underway – be fun to see how Google responds 