Frankly I see no upside to this. As a consumer of aerial photography I just see this as one less option out there. Frankly I’m glad I have at least one independent choice in Aerials Express.
Spin this however you wish, but this is bad for consumers.
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James Fee - jfee@weogeo.com
James works for WeoGeo helping people organize, share and monetize their geo-content.
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I have to be honest. My company and myself have found Aerials Express to be a pretty poor choice to buy aerial photography. I have 6 different CD packages containing aerials that were not in the right projection or didn’t cover the area of need that was told to us they had. The State of Florida has a site called Labins, that offers free aerials that are at par or even better than the ones we recieved from Aerials Express. I would advise people out there to make sure they ask the proper questions when purchasing and get what they are paying for. If a represenative can’t answer or know the difference between ground resolutuion and pixel resoultion, find someone else!!!!
I’m sure we could bring up loads of companies where people like one over another. For me Aerials Express has been nothing but a joy, but you are right that you need to ask questions up front and even request samples to make sure you are getting what you think you are getting.
Labins seems to have data from 2004 (unless I’m looking in the wrong place) which is pretty much out of date for a fast growing state such as Florida.
Help me out here – how does DG owning GE remove an option from the marketplace?Are you saying once Airphoto USA (now owned by GE) is acquired by DG you will no longer consider them a choice?
While I’ll give you that GE and DG are not exactly running the same business model, you have eliminated one independent company out of the picture.
I’m a consultant, so I go with what helps me get my work done so I’ll never say I wouldn’t go Airphoto USA, but I don’t like this kind of consolidation. None of it has anything to do with consumers.
How is this “legal”? Aren’t there antitrust issues involved here?
I always viewed GlobeXplorer as a way to avoid working with Digital Globe, but still get Digital Globe imagery. I’m not happy about this one bit.
You hit it right on the head of the nail james. This is all about an IPO and nothing about giving consumers a better choice.
While I’ll agree that more choice and competition creates a better marketplace for consumers, I don’t have any problem with this at all. I’ve purchased imagery from pre & post acquisition and was happy with the results either way. The only difference I noticed was sending my email to a different address and dealing with a different rep than before. As long as the company keeps taking good aerials and selling them at a reasonable price, I’ll be happy. The most disapointing merger/acquisition/spin-off in this area in recent times for me was the sell of Kodak’s CityPix division as it actually stopped functioning and their data became quite difficult to find.
Matt, what incentive do they have to keep prices low?
Clarification: I meant pre & post acquisition of AirPhotoUSA by GlobeXplorer. I obviously haven’t dealt with DigitalGlobe since their acquisition of GlobeXplorer. However, I actually thought these were already one company for the last year or so. The only thing suprising to me about this news is that it hadn’t already happened.
K, Adena do you not see how there is one less business now competing for my dollar. Matt, you are naive to think prices will stay low or we will not get hurt by this. I consider this really bad news. We are going to see higher prices and more restrictive DRM technology out of this. It is going to become the equivalent of cable versus dsl with it being satellite versus aerial photos. I hope quickbird puts up some new high rez satellites soon. Oh wait – it just so happens that digitalglobe owns quickbird. I don’t see how this is not anti-trust in the space/aerial imaging market.
I think I might have to call my reps on this one…
Matt, DigitalGlobe now owns the whole process, from the time the image is taken to the time it shows up in my GIS application.
I have a huge problem with that to be honest.
DG is not the only game in town. GeoEye provides many of the same services. So I would say that they provide some competition and are coming out with GeoEye-1 which will be an even higher resolution satelite than Quickbird. Aerial & Satelite imagery are exteremly capital intensive businesses. They work well on a micro-scale or a macro-scale. There is not a really good meso-scale business model. You either need to be a strictly local/regional provider with as little capital investment as possible or a huge fully integrated business to make money at this stuff. I’m not arguing that a huge integrated business is good for consumers, just that it is the inevitable course for a long-term private space/aerial imaging company.
GeoEye-1 has not launched, but I agree it is an option.
That said if all I’m left with are GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, as a consumer I’ve lost out.
What did you have before for satelite imagery? The only US based commerical satelites for several years have been are Quickbird & IKONOS sold by DigitalGlobe & SpaceImaging (now GeoEye). So you had 2 choices before & now you have 2 choices. There have also only been 2 Aerial Photo companies providing regularly updated nation-wide coverage as well: AirPhotoUSA & AerialsExpress. There are still 2 choices. The only major loss in this area occured around 4 years ago when CityPix was disbanded. There are also the government data sources such as the NAIP which is providing annually updated imagery. Then you also have European satelite companies.
Now wait, the issue isn’t about the source data, but who you are going to buy it from. It is true that GlobeXpress did resell DigitalGlobe imagery, but they had to be competitive. That is no longer the case as they don’t have to compete with as many large resellers.
I don’t really care if only one company is taking photos, but if 10 are selling them, then the price would be lower than if it was that only one.
I’ve always just purchased straight from the source company and that’s actually why I haven’t purchased anything from DigitalGlobe in the last couple of years, because they stopped selling direct to the public and forced you to go through a reseller.
Well then I can see how this is of no concern to you, but for me I see this as a huge elimination of competition. Frankly I’m not really sure what recourse any of us have as you rightly point out that we now HAVE to buy directly from DigitalGlobe.
At first I didn’t realize what a big deal this was but I think James’ point is something we should all take note of.
While it might be true that we buy some items direct from companies (ie Dell), in this case I think multiple resellers keeps the price down. I’m a little worried what we might be paying in the near future with this deal.
I’m a user of Aerials Express and they have been a great team to work with. You would definitely think there are some monopoly issues that are going to arise out of these acquisitions in the long-term. Isn’t Landiscor still an option (or am I missing something)?
The key here is consolidation of the distribution channel. Right now GlobeXplorer distributes imagery from all kinds of primary aquirers. Now they are a subsidiary of one of the content producers. Imagine if iTunes was run by a major record label. Hmmmmm. I think this really undercuts GlobeXplorers value as an efficient aggregator of multiple sources of imagery, because other content providers will now be leary of working with them, for fear of getting the short and sharp end of the stick.
James, you’re a consultant. You don’t pay for imagery, the client does. Nothing to worry about. You can just mark it up another 5% if it’ll make you feel better.
Let’s look at the silver lining, maybe this will break the Google stranglehold on DG data for globe serving. I think GlobeXplorer has a much better relationship with ESRI and hopefully that will be exploited.
Thanks Jack! I feel much better now!
Now that I see where you and a few others are coming from, I’d feel the same way as you if I was in your position. If I had bought one of GlobeXplorer’s imagery delivery solutions and was depending on them to be a fairly independant aggregator & provider of imagery to me for a reasonable known price, and then they got bought up by one of the companies whose data they were distributing, I would also be upset. I didn’t see anything big about this before because I’ve never been very interested in the imagery data GlobeXplorer provides (most of our stuff is too rural to be in a well covered area) and therefore couldn’t see how this was changing the landscape for me. But see it from your point of view, I would feel like I was getting squeezed as well.
You know…it might be worth looking a bit wider.
I would say that SPOT Image has had a world wide model that collects and distributes imagery for a long time. RADARSAT does, Infoterra in Europe (EADS) is about to forge ahead with TerraSAR and TerraSAR-X and are actively integrating services, GeoEye has always offered integrated services.
In fact, when I think about it, only DigitalGlobe has not really put it together end-to-end, until this announcement. In this respect, they are doing what others have been doing.
I see today at Very Spatial, that India alone is launching 4 sats, RapidEye in Germany is about to launch a constellation and, again, Infoterra (not to mention ESA) and the British Space Agency have birds up there.
Lots more are coming.
In my mind, the IPO issue is a big issue, but apart from this announcement. Say…for example, one company that currently distributes a lot of images, but cannot sell them or allow them to be used for commercial purposes, suddenly owns 51% of said IPO issues – then – things change.
Keep up the good work.
You’re missing the point – DG bought GE, not the other way around. Whatever relationships GE had are the ones in risk. This transaction also moves DG into a competitor role with one of it’s biggest customers – Google – which will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Regardless, DG has shown clearly inept leadership for quite some time with the constant yoyo’ing between wanting to be a direct sales versus channel sales. Hiring sales people, and firing them to hire channel managers. They’ve done this at least twice in the past 5 years. They are doing this again with the GE purchase – moving from channel back to direct (via GE).
In the end their partners and customers both are the losers in this.
Stay tuned for a DG IPO coming soon based on perceived value of owning the entire chain.
As both the major US commercial satellite companies are propped up by NGA funding doesn’t the government simply own everything? Look what happened to Space Imaging, they didn’t get an NGA contract then they get bought out (for a fraction of their cost) by OrbImage (who did receive a contract) and rebranded as GeoEye. Shouldn’t the real concern be that the government controls who survives and who dies in the commercial satellite imaging world? Or perhaps without NGA funding there would be no commercial satellite imagery marketplace? Look who buys the data? Those of us who make single scene purchases are a drop in the bucket compared to NextView/ClearView contracts.
I wonder how this and the recent GlobeXplorer deal with Microsoft deal will affect their relationship with Google? Anyone have any ideas?
Smart move DG, they knew their agreement was so draconian so what do they do? They go buy a company that just made a deal with microsoft and so that breaks them out of the Google stranglehold, way to go DG! Now we just need GlobeXplorer to make some “deals” with ESRI.
i thought Google was under the stranglehold of DG? at least, that’s the way Google always portrays it…”it’s not us, it’s DG that won’t let us share the data”
I just want to respond to Paul’s point about how other providers of imagery might be wary of distributing through GE, now owned by DG. I asked that very question of the CEO in our podcast. She said all the providers are lining up for distributors and that DG could sign virtually all the other satellite providers now. She didn’t mention the aerial folks. http://www.directionsmag.com/images/podcasts/070105_Jill_Smith.mp3
Adena
What do DG stocks cost? I know that they are still private!
@JOD, NGA ‘owns’ all imagery collections? Don’t you mean the taxpayer owns the collections, with course for rights management and course for National Security?
@Everyone Else, I think it’s interesting that so many have jumped the page of thought in relation to the consolidation – when – for the last few years now, we’ve all been wondering how in the world we aim to compete with newer sensors that may or may not become launched before any US company satellites are deployed and operational.
Please tell me you’re all joking, right?
Not mention, DG providing an end-to-end chain of distribution like they did back in the day is a bad thing? Or is it that you’re all imagery producers who’ve been making money in the little experiment that DG set-up so that you can make a little money on the side doing production work for their library?
I’m also still scratching my head at the guy that thinks DG is somehow aligning itself to become a ‘competitor’ to Google Earth.
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[...] Been doing some reading today and wondering. First off we have Digital Globe buying GlobeXplorer and then we have Google and Digital Globe in an “exclusive” imagery deal. Now we find out that Microsoft has inked a deal with GlobeXplorer for for then 400,000 square miles of high res US Imagery. [...]