I'm on a relatively late model macbook pro using safari with a fresh silverlight install and it's dramatically slower than street view, enough that it's difficult to navigate around.

"the Bing thing is handling perspective deformation much better, whereas Google Streetview introduces a lot of messy artifacts as the 3d parameters change."

I don't see what you are referring to. What I do see is poorer quality from the top camera on google ( http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... ), but I also see artifacts and whole blurred sections (like frosted glass) of images on bing, though it's apparently not possible to link to individual views.

And other than what I mentioned, it really, actually is just a straight up street view clone. It's not a value judgement, it's just a fact. One huge company cloned something created by another huge company. I'm not sure why any of these statements would be controversial to anyone unless they had a stake in the success of one over the other.