GeoData Explorations: Google's Ever-Expanding Geo Investment

Friend [2008-12-16 02:14 PM]

Like Street View, Map Maker is two words.

http://www.google.com/mapmaker

http://www.google.com/streetview

Jason Arnold [2008-12-17 10:17 AM]

I'm amazed at how much progress Google has made with Street View in such a short period of time. I'm looking forward to the continued expansion and usage(via mashups etc).

"Unsurprisingly, this image and the Mapmaker image show opposite data density concentrations."

Is this because the usage is limited to different countries? Or just because one is more popular than the other in different places?

steven feldman [2008-12-17 10:28 AM]

Is it just me who gets a shiver down my spine when I look at this map of world domination by Google. Are we going to wake up one day and wonder how we allowed Google to overwhelm this space? Or maybe they are lovely cuddly people who have our best interests at heart and we have no reason to be concerned

TPHD [2008-12-17 10:42 AM]

@jason arnold

hey jason! the two images don't show usage. the first shows what is being mapped currently. the second shows what has already been mapped.

@steven feldman

zomg they have maps!!!1

Carl Youngblood [2008-12-17 12:14 PM]

Steven Feldman, the thing is, Google isn't really doing this, Google is enabling human beings to do this on their own. If anything, I would say this is a victory for the human race, and Google apparently understands that user empowerment should be their primary goal.

Jim Brown [2008-12-18 12:08 AM]

Carl Youngblood,

Even though, Google is 'enabling human beings' to do the mapping, in the end they (Google) are retaining the ownership of the resulting map data...

Ron [2008-12-20 01:24 PM]

I checked out mapmaker after reading your intriguing article. Unfortunately, it appears that Google hasn't enable most of the US for editing yet ...

till [2008-12-21 05:08 PM]

I'm amazed that people really use mapmaker and rather contribute to a product of a commercial entity, than for example to OpenStreetmaps.

I'm sure in the future, we'll pay a little bit for all those location based services -- e.g. "For as little as 2$/month, learn what's going on around you.".

Or does mapmaker come with some sort of guarantee that they will never turn your user contributed data into money? I'm almost sure that whatever you put in the system is "owned" by Google, or at least you grant them any right to do whatever they want.