It looks as good or better than google earth, particularly the trees, but the (texture) caching seems to be limited, which could be obviated by using local storage.

Yeah, it lacks a search box but the up close 3d renderings look better to me than what Google currently has available to the public.

As a pure technology demo, it's more impressive than a plain satellite view. But the product isn't comparable.

This is basically just a WebGL demo.

For actual Nokia Maps (with search and routing) go to http://maps.nokia.com/

Well, what Nokia has done is better than the way Google has it set up. At least for advanced machines that can run it. But I'm sure Google will catch up when it's a reliable standard.

Google has their own WebGL demo which isn't anything like this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106658

I've played with their streetview transition in GL... really nice.