New Google Earth Licensing, Does It Change Anything?
The news broke this week that Google has updated the Google Earth EULA to allow “internal use” for commercial users. Now what does this mean? I’m thinking that you can now use Google Earth at work for for personal and work related use as long as you aren’t reselling that work. For example, I can now load Google Earth “Free” on my work laptop and research a camping trip I might make this winter. Before this was precluded by the EULA. I also believe that I can use Google Earth for admin purposes within my company. But since I’m a consultant, I still can’t use Google Earth Free/Plus to produce or work with any project for my clients. That still requires Google Earth Pro.
Snidely Whiplash no longer has commercial KML users tied up
So now when you see a KML while browsing the internet, you can safely view it at work (assuming your IT staff allows it). I believe you can also use KML created by you or your company, or view KML created by others for your work (if you are an end user). But if you are in the consulting business, you’ll still need to buy Google Earth Pro to produce products for clients.
Thus those who create KML with GE for clients will still have to buy Google Earth Pro, BUT their clients will be able to view the KML we give them with Google Earth without having to buy copies of Google Earth Pro. Huge shift in my opinion here.
(Note: I am not a lawyer here so listen to me at your peril.)
Update: Let me just clarify here. I’m saying that I think this makes Google Earth the geospatial viewer we’ve all been asking for. I think anyone in a commercial setting can view KML with Google Earth no matter who the KML is for. I think the only limitation anymore is that you can’t create KML with GE without Pro and you can’t perform any analysis with GE without Pro. That is such a small part of what GE is that this will almost never come up for most users. As I said above: HUGE SHIFT in the Digital Globe product sector.
James,
What do think about using GE as a viewer of KMLs generated by ‘other’ packages: am I invalidating their EULA by checking that my KMLs look fine in GE before sending them out?
IMO there’s no issue.
Chris C.: I say yes, you should be able to view KML created in other packages because I’d define that as “internal use”.
MANIFOLD!!!
This a great ‘adjustment’ by Google. It’s provides a workable solution for small / medium businesses. I don’t think any large corporation would be silly enough to allow the use of the free version of Google Earth however. Not just because large corporations are more often targets for these types of lawsuits but also because of how easy it would be to accidentally break the license agreement. If an employee so much as hit’s print screen and sends it to a client you’ve broken the license agreement. In a small company this would be a manageable risk, but in a large company that wouldn’t fly.
The other question is whether or not this applies to Google Maps data as well. Obviously you would you still have to access the data via the Google API, but could a corporation use the images for an internal web based map? Looking at the terms of use for Google Maps I don’t see any buiness exclution, but I do see a requirement that the application be ‘generally accessible to consumers without charge’, whatever the heck that means. “Generally’ is not usually a word you see in many legal documents.
James:
My read (zero years of law school) is that all browsing and ordinary use of the GE viewer–including creating placemarks, etc.–is now permitted in professional environments.
The “commercial” uses prohibited I see are 3rd party products–a flight simulator game, fantasy-worlds whatever–that bundle up GE or its components as part of its package under the mistaken notion that “if it’s free, I can use it any way I want.”
BT
That might be true Brian, it is a grey area to me. I wasn’t willing to go that far, but if it holds up, this could be a huge boon to users.
Gosh! Does Manifold generate KMLs? Thanks for the tip-off Jack
although, note that further down under the photography section, it still says commercial uses are not allowed … so I’m even less sure now of what I’m allowed to use it for then I was before…
Cam W.,
The license agreement for Google maps is clear cut if you have an intranet application you need to buy Google maps enterprise.
“Google Maps for Enterprise utilizes the Google Maps API, the solution for free, public facing web sites, and adds enterprise quality support plus the ability to integrate maps into intranet applications.”
http://www.google.com/enterprise/maps/
The IT dept. at my company knocked off GE soon after its release. By then, I had shown enough use to justify the $1,000 yearly fee for the Pro version – and the extensions I needed. Within the that year – the uses for it (and thus the client fees) dropped off. Lucky for me, the extensions became included in the prices, so $400 was easier to sell.
But – I don’t think that the EULA is what had the IT dept getting the techs out to remove all the GE installs done by people in the know….I think it was the bandwidth use of GE that brought the issue to someone’s attention. Our office is one of 100 or so across the US/Canada – and I don’t really understand how our WAN is setup. But – have you watched the Network graph is Task Manager when flying around in GE? Then multiply that by maybe 5 people out of 80 in our office. Suddenly emails aren’t arriving, the timesheet system is knocked offline due to packet timeouts…
So – the legal issue would be enought to cause IT to be wary, but keeping the bandwidth available is much more important.
[...] Google Earth jetzt für “interne Zwecke” nutzen dürfen. Ein grosser Fortschritt. Der Blog-Eintrag von James Fee (Auf [...]
I think this whole matter is ‘BS’. That’s just how I feel about it.
Surely a company the size of Google, with the products they produce, and the knowledge they have of their users – could be explaining their policy MUCH better.
Shame on Google.
[...] Google Earth Blog (top GE watchdog) posted the news that the license agreement for Google Earth Free and Plus Version 4.2 (released August 22) has been revised significantly.  Business users can now use the browser for internal communications. This is good news for “business geographic developers”. We can now write customized KML files with internal geographic data which can be distributed within a company to employees, and viewed in the Google Earth browser, the free version as opposed to the costly Pro version.  It appears that it is still illegal to use Google Earth for “external business (commercial) applications”, but the internal license opens up some very interesting possibilities! More on this change is available at GEB, and also James Fee. [...]
well, now that its OK for me to play with GE at work… I just exported 300,000 building footprints from an ESRI personal geodatabase feature class…. using Manifold 7.x (file->export drawing) thanks for the tip…. to kmz and launched in GE. Kinda cool I guess, but way slow in google earth until zoomed way in. I was looking and could not see a way to do it from ArcView 9.x.
KJ: KML Home Companion will convert ArcMAP to KML (free download from ESRI).
http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=15195
There are several other products available for purchase.
Thanks I will try it out. It looks like it does KML and not KMZ (Manifold does both). Still it goes to my general whininess – I dislike that I have to pay a lot to “extend” ArcGIS in order to work with extremley common geospatial data formats (GML, TAB, KMZ/KML), or else resort to non-production grade arcscripts. I would like to see at least some (maybe 5 or less) of these very common geospatial formats seep into the standard product from ESRI w/o requiring Data Interoperability Extension. I am not knocking Arcscripts either – that is certainly a testiment to the sheer robustness of the ESRI user community and a huge resource.
@KJ – I understand your frustration in having to buy extra extensions but sometimes they do add benefits that would not make their way into the base software.
There are a bunch in Arc2Earth but in reply your statement above about 300K features in GE, you will be able to view a nearly limitless number of features when V2 is out and vector regions are fully supported. [1]
as to the original post, I’ll agree with Brian T. above. Certainly a boon for any commercial/government users out there
[1] – sample 500K parcels/buildings
[...] have the old agreement to compare the wording, "business entity user" is definitely new. James Fee has an interesting entry about the change in agreement on his blog. There’s also an interesting post on the Google Earth Blog where I guess a person from the [...]