French Google Earth Rival Dies in a Day

Google Earth rival Geoportail dies in one day. It’s got to be a guiness record. The French president Jacques Chirac just chaired the official launch of Geoportail

The site says (translated by Google Translator):

You are incredibly numerous to connect you to Géoportail,
gate of the territories and the citizens since his setting on line.
We recorded several million connections in a few hours.
Because of this multitude, the site is currently saturated.

Our teams put all works about it to allow you to reach it again in
satisfactory conditions of navigation and
you thank for the interest which you carry to this innovative interdepartmental site.

As you can see Google translator ain’t a champion for translating French sites, but you get the idea. “incredibly numerous”! Google can surely do better than that (at least I hope so).

Geoportail is interesting, inspite of initial setback, because it offers hi-resolution coverage of the entire country. You can zoom in to within 50 centimetres of the ground.