Our Microsoft Maps terms of use are pretty clear on how the imagery can, or in some cases cannot, be used. See Microsoft Bing Maps Platform APIs Terms Of Use - Bing Maps for Enterprise for the full information.
If you’ve ever had the need to acquire Virtual Earth aerial photography for uses outside of the Virtual Earth platform, your options are pretty clear:
Check out who provides that Imagery and reach out to them directly
If you go to Bing.com/maps and look at the map in aerial mode, you will see attribution in the bottom right hand corner. You can contact that company directly to get direct usage rights for just the imagery you need. Some companies are:
- Maxar High-resolution Satellite Imagery (maxar.com)
- Earthstar Geographics TerraColor® Landsat Satellite Images of Earth by Earthstar Geographics
- Airbus Satellite Imagery | Earth Observation | Airbus Space
- Tomtom Satellite Imagery | TomTom
- Ordnance Survey MasterMap Imagery Layer | OS Products (ordnancesurvey.co.uk)
What about the "Birds Eye" imagery?
You might not know that Vexcel is the home of the original Virtual Earth cameras. If you are looking to get the latest, you can reach out to them through Vexcel Imaging - Home of the UltraCam (vexcel-imaging.com)
Why would I need another source than Bing Maps Imagery?
There are a few cases where more comprehensive imagery is needed and while Bing Maps was a good place to start you might need more. Some common cases are:
- Building customer derivative datasets or tiles - The Bing Maps Terms of Use specifically prohibit this as imagery providers expect Bing Maps to be used for visualizing and not data generation. To build a derivative solutiion please reach out to the imagery provider for the region you are targeting and create a direct agreement with them and do not use Bing Maps tiles.
- Looking for changes over time - Bing Maps keeps only one set of stiched worldwide imagery at any one time. If you are looking for changes in imagery over time, you need to find a provider that keeps a collection of imagery taken at multiuple times at the same location. Imagery is so big, we only keep one active copy so we do not have other timeslices of imagery at the same location available
- Building a navigation Solution - Microsoft Bing Maps does not support live turn-by-turn navigation so if you are building a solution that will require live updating Turn-by-turn, we would also send you to our basemap supplier, Tomtom.
What do I do if I have more questions about licensing Bing Maps Imagery?
If you do have any questions about Licensing Bing Maps, including specific imagery scenarios, please do not hesitate to contact our sales teams as documented at Licensing Bing Maps for Enterprise (microsoft.com)
