By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
Today Google announced several important upgrades to its line of mapping and spatial viewing products. Google also said that more than 100 million copies of Google Earth have been downloaded, less than one year after its initial release. Each new feature is important by itself, but together they affirm Google’s commitment to develop robust geographic information environments that can become a pervasive part of the global Internet experience—and thereby help fulfill Google’s corporate mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally acceptable and useful.”
To underscore the importance Google places on its geographics line, the announcement took place at the first Google Geo Developer's Day at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Present to greet the developers and selected members of the press were Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "Geographic information is something we are excited about," said Page, adding that GIS fills a "fundamental need" in the human psyche to try to extend one's sense of presence in the world. "People care about the earth," added Schmidt. "The platform we are developing with you [the programmers in attendance] will help these efforts" to improve the environment.
Highlights from today’s announcements include:
Satellite imagery update: Google Earth has been given a significant update to its high-resolution satellite imagery, known as its Primary Database. The update increases Google Earth’s index of high-resolution imagery by four times, to more than 20% of the world’s landmass. This makes sub-meter high-resolution imagery available for more than one third of the world’s population. While initially available only in Google Earth, this database will also be accessible in Google Maps shortly, the company said.
New version of Google Earth: This is the first major update since its launch as a Google product last July. Of special interest to AEC professionals is new support for the display of user-applied textures (bit-mapped images applied to CAD models for visual realism). Support for textured models makes Google Earth even more appealing to AEC users who want to display building and infrastructure models in their intended environment. The user interface is more streamlined, devoting more screen real estate to viewing. This release of Google Earth adds support for the Linux operating system and has been fully localized in French, Italian, German and Spanish. The Mac version has been recompiled for full support of Intel-based Macs.
Google SketchUp with textured buildings: In coordination with the release of Google Earth, Google SketchUp now enables the creation of textured buildings for visualization in Google Earth and the Google 3D Warehouse. The pre-Google version of SketchUp supported textures but the free version renamed Google SketchUp had that feature turned off since it could not be exported to Google Earth.
Free Google SketchUp now for Apple Macintosh: While the professional version of SketchUp has been on the Macintosh for years, the initial release of the free Google SketchUp was for Windows only. As of today, Google SketchUp is also a Mac product.
Google Maps API update: In response to developer feedback, an update to the Google Maps API (Application Programming Interface) enables developers of Google Maps-powered mash-ups (websites that merge geographic information with Google Maps) to integrate data based on addresses. Google said the ability to geocode addresses using the Google Maps API has been the most requested feature from Maps API users. Street-level geocoding is now available for the U.S., Canada, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
KML for Google Maps: Support for KML (Keyhole Markup Language), the file format used to display user-generated data in Google Earth, has been extended to Google Maps. This allows data created in Google Earth to now also be viewed in a web browser as a simple mash-up. This is especially interesting because creating a KML file is within the reach of the motivated average computer user, since it requires no computer programming expertise.
Google Maps for Enterprise: Google has beefed up its formerly anemic enterprise model by announcing a new program called Google Maps for Enterprise. It is a fee-based licensing and support program for businesses and government agencies wanting to embed a Google Maps experience in websites or internal applications. Expected applications include mapping customer locations, tracking shipments and managing facilities.
Google Earth is available at http://earth.google.com/. The Google Maps API is available at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/.
Technorati Tags: Google Google Earth GIS Google Maps 3D SketchUp geospatial imagery texture