Google purchases 3D super archive of the world
Google purchases 3D super archive of the world
This is pretty interesting as Google has now purchased Keyhole software. Which is a very slick 3d app that allows you to view any point on the globe and in pretty decent detail. It's a piece of software I've been using on and off for years. Although I'm sure the 3d application will continue to be a commercial app ass creating, maintaining this archive is expensive, I can't wait to see what free services Google will be providing for use with the 3D imagery? Perhaps a 3D (pre-rendered for the webbrowser) mapping application? Maybe when you do an address search it will provide a satellite map of the area (only cities have the detail to see roads). Who knows but I'm sure they had a very good reason. Maybe Google simply wants to take on Teraserver and provide color satellite maps via an XML webservice, as Terraserver is still only providing low res B&W images.
If you haven't seen or used the KeyHole software, at least check out the (mildy impressive) web animation of the software in action here. But I really insist you install the small demo (it downloads the sattelite maps on the fly and caches them) as it will knock your socks off.
Best of all, effective immediatly, Google has lowered the basic version from $70 to $30.
Full Story: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html