Google and Dell have struck a deal to preinstall Google Desktop, Google Toolbar and a co-branded browser home page on new Dell computers aimed at personal and small busines use, as reported by the BBC and Reuters.

Quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, via Reuters:

“There’s probably more to come” in the Google-Dell partnership, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told investors at a Goldman Sachs & Co. Internet conference. “This is the first” of several agreements.

Could Google Earth pre-installs be next? The entire Google Pack? Or would that be just too big of a bandwidth hit, even for Google? Or perhaps pay-per-install marketing is prohibitively expensive?

(Tangentially related: Dell’s Enterprise Command Centre in Malaysia uses Google Earth in an interesting way.)

(Pssst Google: Apple does preinstalls too. My MacBook Pro came with Comic Life and OmniOutliner, free.)

Last weekend, Hitwise’s global research general manager Bill Tancer hit upon the idea that search term popularity for mapping services might be a good proxy for mindshare. This follows a much remarked-on post of his on Friday where he looked at mapping site popularity from the perspective of “internet visits”, though that data was of US surfers only (something which was left unmentioned by most re-reporting — I originally assumed it was global data too, until I read Bill’s clarification in his comments). I blogged that post, and tried to leave some comments, but only the first one made it past moderation, so here goes with some more questions about the metrics:

Hitwise gets its data via an ISP affiliate program, so that it has access to ISP customers’ web surfing logs. This info includes “a range of industry standard metrics relating to the viewing of websites including page requests, visits and average visit length,” according to this page about their methodology. I don’t see how such data can capture Google Earth usage, so I’m pretty sure that Google Earth’s 2% share of mapping site usage that Hitwise reports only refers to visits to the Google Earth website, where all you can do is download the application.

But this incongruity between new internet uses and old metrics also extends to AJAX-based services. Specifically, using the APIs of web services like Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Microsoft Live Local and MapQuest (free since March 2006) to make mashups on your own domain is not something the traditional accounting model for usage stats captures. Since Google Maps is the first and overwhelmingly popular choice for mashup makers, the Google logo has been in front of far more eyeballs than Hitwise’s numbers suggest.

Hitwise’s mindshare chart for these mapping services is interesting in another way: It allows us to compare Hitwise data to Google’s own. Notice how with Hitwise’s US data, Mapquest has a very large mind share, compared to others:

(Source)

This correlates well with Google Trends’ own mindshare chart for US users:

Link

More relevant, however, is Google Trends’ global mindshare chart for maps, which I made a few weeks ago when Google Trends first came out. it shows Mapquest running neck-and-neck with Google Earth:

Link

What does this tell us? That MapQuest’s brand awareness is largely a US phenomenon — probably because MapQuest has traditionally been weak in non-US maps.

In addition, now that we know that Hitwise’s dataset is US-only, I suspect Google’s position in search vs. Yahoo! and MSN is even stronger globally, because Google’s localization efforts are far more advanced than the competition’s. Still, I think the overall global market share for the big three search engines is lower than Hitwise’s US numbers, simply because of the existence of local services, like China’s Baidu.

• Glidingcontest.org bills itself as the world’s largest hangliding/paragliding flight archive (though with a focus that is definitely European). With over 46,000 user-contributed flights, that may well be the case. All flights are searchable by location and are available as KMZ files — for example, here are two in Northern Pakistan. (Via Wurznepp)
• Manifold System is a map authoring tool that’s reasonably priced at $245 (though I doubt it really is “the most comprehensive, the most powerful and the easiest to use GIS and mapping system ever created”). Version 7.00, shipped last week, supports Google Earth in a variety of interesting ways, including the ability to let you work with Google Maps content inside the application. There is also a tutorial.
• On SourceForge, Python KML Library: “A Python library for easy creation and manipulation of Google Earth KML and KMZ placemark files.”
• The Earth is Square posts more details on the five Google Summer of Code projects for improving NASA World Wind.
• Revit Building is AutoDesk’s BIM (building information modeling) tool for architects — a SketchUp on steroids (with price to match, at $4,995). Now Avatech Solutions is looking for beta testers for its Revit KML exporter. Developer Matt Mason writes on his blog, “For you Revit users that like to collaborate or just communicate with owners, contractors and others – Earth Connector Revit will be a compelling way to do it!” (The company already has a KML exporter for AutoDesk’s AutoCAD, the Earth Connector, blogged here when it was still in beta.)
• WorldCAD Access coyly lets us know that “a well-known name in the CAD industry will spring a free CAD program on the market. Free, except for commercial use.” We’re not yet allowed to know who it might be, though. Will it be a competitor to Sketchup?
• Are you one of the few people still not working at Google? You’re in luck: They’re looking for a GIS data preparation technician for Google Earth.
• A further tidbit from the ongoing Bentley user conference, courtesy of CAD Insider:
  

  Bentley has swung itself around to align with SketchUp, the 3D architectural program. Bentley can convert SketchUp files (SKP) to MicroStation (DGN), use SketchUp reference files and place SketchUp files as cells.

  Which I believe means that you can start your projects in SketchUp and then just switch to Bentley MicroStation if you want to get serious.

Mikel Maron’s talk at XTech 2006, GeoRSS : Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS Feeds, is now online. It’s a great introduction to what GeoRSS is, in case you haven’t been following closely. In his talk, Mikel looks at the relative merits of different geospatial markup languages:

There are of course other geodata formats in use, which deserve a look as alternatives to GeoRSS. KML is used in Google Earth, and loads of data layers have been published by an active community. However, KML is very tied to its application, with features specifically aimed for 3D spinny globes, and the spec is controlled by a single organization. GPX, for data interchange between GPS units, is again very tied to specifics of GPS units. GML is a feature rich vocabulary for encoding geographic information, but its complexity has been daunting for unversed developers, and its proper use misunderstood. GML is similar to RDF, defining a number of primitive objects that can be assembled into Profiles for particular purposes. In fact, a GML profile for GeoRSS is a result of the new standard.

[Minor fact check: KML support is native in NASA World Wind, and announced for ESRI ArcGIS Explorer.]

(And if that’s not enough standards, Technorati’s Tantek Çelik has proposed the “geo” microformat, based on the vCard format. [Via Geospatial Semantic Web Blog])

Meanwhile, the latest update to Microsoft’s Virtual Earth supports GeoRSS, and so does Yahoo!’s Maps API. Support for Google Earth is currently available through Zoran Kovacevic’s web app.

I don’t think Google has anything to fear from GeoRSS, precisely because it is so simple and modest, aiming just to georeference web content. KML can do far more, but requires a 3D geobrowser. It would be great if future versions of Google Earth let you subscribe to GeoRSS feeds, just like the better HTML web browsers let you subscribe to RSS. As the competition among virtual globes heats up, this will no doubt become a common feature.

Blogging Microsoft Virtual Earth (aka “Live Local”) is not really part of the mandate of Ogle Earth as long as it remains a 2D mapping application, but some aspects of the version that went live last night have a bearing on Google Earth.

• First, the UK imagery: As Ed Parsons and other people have commented, it is superb, besting Google’s in those UK spots I’ve checked — if not in resolution, then in the quality and consistency of the post-processing. It will be interesting to compare future datasets if (okay, when) Microsoft releases its 3D virtual globe.
• The functionality of the scratchpad has improved dramatically. It took me no time at all to annotate a few places, even add an image, and share them publicly as a collection, like so. The scratchpad is nothing less than a geospatial version of Google’s Notebook, and it is so easy to use that my parents would have no trouble att all creating their own mashup and sending a link to friends.

  Google has several options available to it as it responds in this competitive space. It could make Notebook geospatially aware, so that you can annotate both URLs and physical spaces in Maps and Earth; it could also leverage Google Base, making it easy for users to save or publish geospatial database objects such as annotated placemarks or georeferenced photo collections from within Maps and Earth (including private collections); or it could repurpose Google Pages, perhaps in combination with Google Base, providing templates that make a user’s collected geospatial content easy to browse by others.

I think this is going to be an interesting summer:-)

Bentley, makers of the industrial-strength CAD and AEC authoring tool MicroStation, are having their user conference, and CAD Insider posts some notes from the event related to Google Earth. First off, CAD Insider has news of the latest MicroStation V8 XM release, which comes with a new feature that has proved popular with attendees:

Define an animation path for use in Google Earth. After a MicroStation model has been placed in Google Earth, a curve drawn is used by Google Earth to pan around the project

Elsewhere, CAD Insider has a Q&A involving Bentley representatives with a sense of humor (“What does XM short for?” “Nothing, it’s just a name.”) where they answer the “Why use Google Earth?” question.

What’s in store for the open-source NASA World Wind? The Earth is Square lists some projects people will be working on during Google’s Summer of Code:

• Shapefile improvements
• Student Teacher interaction system
• Correctly Handling Non-Ortho Images
• Support of Adding Imagery into World Wind
• Integrated Browser

Adding imagery and a browser involve World Wind catching up with Google Earth. The other three projects sound intriguing, though.