Alan Glennon at Geography 2.0 has a very interesting article up about Microsoft’s plans regarding their response to Google Earth. Among other things, he points to this posting in Microsoft’s job announcement pages, from back in October 2005:

Have you seen Google Earth? Good concept, bad implementation. We have started a whole new project that takes the Flight Simulation 3D engine, builds Virtual Earth scenarios on it and merges it with our daily easy to use Streets and Trips product. Together this becomes our brand new built-from‘¯Ω-the-ground-up Virtual Earth desktop product. We are looking for a PM to join this effort.

Alan also has some insightful ideas about how Google in turn might respond, and where Google Earth could improve. Might Google buy a gaming company? It’s worth reading the whole piece.

Regarding Google’s much lamented decision to self-censor its Chinese language search service inside China: I don’t disapprove in principle, but I do believe it is a terrible decision on practical grounds, because it sets a bad precedent that could affect Google Earth’s user experience down the line.

Here are two reasons why I don’t have a moral problem with Google censoring results on behalf of the Chinese government:

1) The plain-vanilla English-language Google search service continues to be available to all in China, uncensored by Google but with “subversive” outbound links blocked by China. So choose your poison.

Continue reading Today China, tomorrow Google Earth? →

Within the space of an hour, not one but two blogworthy devices hit Ogle Earth’s radar screen: Small surreptitious GPS tracking devices whose output you can easily view in Google Earth.

First up is the WorldTracker SMS. It can send news of its whereabouts as an SMS to your mobile phone, or if you make use of the company’s website tracking service (for a yearly fee), you can watch it live in Google Earth, just as you always imagined the FBI did it. Pretty hefty price, though, at $600 + subscriptions. (Via Gear Live.)

A cheaper option is the TrackStick, basically a 1GB USB memory stick with built-in GPS tracking. You can find out where it’s been just by plugging it into your computer, apparently, and you can then access the GPS data, including in Google Earth’s KML format. $300 and no additional fees, but no live tracking either. And you better hope the kids you’re trying to track don’t find it.

(Note: I haven’t used either of these, and can’t vouch for them. I am merely noting the sudden prevalence of Google Earth-friendly spying gadgets.)

Hitwise Intelligence, the blog of British web marketing firm Hitwise, notices that “google earth” is rising in popularity as a search term, and goes on to provide all manner of metrics by which this is the case. Hitwise even digs up some interesting demographics:

Google Earth attracts 70% more visits from the 55+ age category than average for the internet.

Yes, old people apparently love Google Earth. (In addition to you young people, I’d hasten to add:-). And Google Earth users tend to be quite wealthy as well. Or so says Hitwise in their blog post.

One thing Hitwise doesn’t look for, however, is some good news-driven reasons for the timing of the popularity spike that they chart: An early version of Google Earth for Mac was leaked early in December, just when the term’s popularity started growing, and just two weeks ago the software came out of beta and the Mac version was officially released. All these events garnered significant coverage in web-based media, which no doubt translated into downloads.

Earth Contest issues a press release claiming “over 60,000 new users” since its “initial launch” two weeks ago. That confuses me. Are we talking about the old game, which was actually launched in October, and then relaunched on December 17? Or are we talking about the “big game”, which was announced then and scheduled to launch at “midnight January 2006” but which isn’t actually running yet? All you can do is pre-register and hang out in a deserted players lounge forum (275 registered members), where posts by different authors sound the same. The game is free and promises “big prizes”. What could the business model possibly be? Had to go read the small print… Ah, yes:

We may share information with other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting. […]

From time to time, we may also make our customer postal addresses list available to other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting. […]

Persons who supply us with their telephone numbers on-line may receive telephone contact from us with information regarding new products and services or upcoming events. From time to time, we may also make our customer telephone number list available to other reputable companies or organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting. […]

caveat emptor.

A Spanish-language article in the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald, translated into English by Robert at 26th Parallel, identifies yet another collaborative trend made possible by Google Earth: Social spying.

El Nuevo Herald reports on a burgeoning new pastime among some Cuban expats in the US: Finding what they purport to be sensitive or secret information about Castro’s regime in Cuba and then marking these up in Google Earth via the Google Earth Community site.

What’s most interesting here, I think, is not so much the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the sites that are marked and labeled. Rather, it is that the trend exists at all and that it gets a write-up in a local paper.

The ability for anyone to freely publish placemarks to the Google Earth Community, and thus to Google Earth proper via the built-in Google Earth Community layers (both ranked and unranked), will lead to some interesting situations in the long term, I think. There already are the odd naming skirmishes conducted via the multiple placing of placemarks on contested areas (qv. the Falklands). But there could also be political implications if some governments, unschooled in the ways of free speech, decide that Google needs to police what is published on its servers, or face financial consequences.

I guess I was thinking of China:-) Microsoft has already decided to comply with local laws that severely limit free speech. Such conflicts of interest are bound to get more frequent. What happens if somebody starts correctly labelling China’s missile silos in Google Earth?