Michael Jones’ “article” on Directions Magazine does a great job of pointing out all the great crowdsourcing projects Google has going.
I know that users are now better served with an easily correctable, rapidly updatable, widely usable base-map built from the synthesis of hundreds of data feeds, hundreds of thousands of individual contributors, and potentially, hundreds of millions of local-expert users. Think of it this way. If tomorrow every Web user in the USA took one minute to look at their neighborhood or workplace on Google Maps and make any necessary corrections, every Internet user would then have access to an up-to-the-minute national map for the first time in world history. This is how it always should have been and I’m glad that it has finally happened and excited about what the future holds.
Wait! Did he just describe OpenStreetMaps? Sorry SteveC, sounds like your project is dead outside of Europe.
On another point, why does Google not want to just tell us where they got the data from? I suppose in the end, it just doesn’t really matter because everyone uses Google Maps for the Aerials, right?
These aren't the basemaps you are looking for.
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There’s two ways to look at this…
One way to ’see’ content on the web…monetized with a commercial prelude: http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/animation/watch/v18805911XYGJfd3D#
Another way to ’see ‘ content on the web…monetized by Google who hides the cost in other ways: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-454132191384264722#docid=642668181358903753
Is the content less valid because Google won’t share the provenance and source product? No, it’s the same movie, we just pay for it in different ways.
Google – it’s our new Microsoft. Us right-thinking and egalitarian folks now have a new windmill to tilt against.
Of course making money off of a cartoon from 1963 is easy in 2009 because the costs to produce where already made.
YouTube hasn’t made Google a dime because it doesn’t scale well to content creation. Hulu cleans its clock because as with mapping, “its the data stupid”.
So the battle lines have been drawn, but not in a way that is fair. Google gets data from government sources by giving away Google Earth. The public in the mean time has to then resort to using proprietary Google Maps API to get their data.
Viva La Revolution!
The cost to produce the geospatial data at local/state/federal sources is already sunk – it’s the aggregation and re-servicing of those data that are under scrutiny here.
That said, all of the monetization schemes in the world have yet to make a penny reselling geo-data beyond a handful of directly interested end-users.
Is it fair that a company as big as Google has figured out a formula that just might get the data into a more accessible state?
Depends on what your definition of is is.
Looks like Adena pulled the article……
> Wait! Did he just describe OpenStreetMaps?
He just described OpenStreetMap’s data creation and maintenance model in an unholy union with Ordnance Survey’s license agreement. All Your Data Are Belong To Us, indeed.
My favorite new feature of the GoogleSource data is this new representation of one of the islands in Lake Erie.
At least they got the streets right.
Did you use the “Report a problem” link so Google can make a correction?
Similar problem with the islands of Saint Pierre and Miqelon in the Cabot Strait:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=New+Brunswick,+Canada&ll=46.813689,-56.220474&spn=0.278194,0.815048&z=11
Let’s all welcome Google to the GIS kitchen.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/hungry_polar_bear_explores_ship_wwAPxcdFpRVk8STBrG1U0J?photo_num=2
Wish we had a steel hull around us, too.
FTA “Unfortunately, that data (GIS) has been inaccessible, disorganized, offline, restrictively licensed, or otherwise unavailable. (NSDI efforts reflect this situation.)”
I have worked in this field for over 10 years and i couldn’t agree more! Time to leave our little isolated island behind.
where did they get the data? hmmm maybe they traded for it!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101203421.html
or maybe they traded enterprise maps api licenses for it??
How does this give you any more access to it than before?
Can you query those parcels? Can you search by them?
Nope, just a little pretty picture that really doesn’t add much because you can’t get access to the parcels to do anything with them in your own applications. If I could get a parcel boundary returned in GeoJSON then sure maybe we’d have something here.
Otherwise they are just locked up in some other proprietary system which other than letting me see them, doesn’t really give me anything more than I had last month.
they just came out with this, its not perfect, for example check out areas where water bodies go over the line work.
as it is today, i guess it depends on who the “you” is. if “joe schmoe” just wants to see how the parcel lines run in his neighborhood or where a GPS point he took is relative to a parcel line then what other options does he have? did i miss something?
Seems like a very edge case to me. I should take a GPS out and see how accurate the parcel boundaries are in my neighborhood. Are they off by inches, feet, or yards?
hey james
maybe there’s an opportunity for people providing the data then? create addon services, maybe for free or maybe for a small subscription. promote that you have the latest version of the data and use Google to drive those searching for it into your town service.
here’s a quick mapplet that benefits from the parcel lines being there for a town, you could imagine links on the parcel balloon that pointed you into premium services. http://bit.ly/3XQjQ
further, add it to a geositemap and people can actually find the UI when then search google maps.
overall, I’m not sure I see the big deal here, the data is free and available to others as well right? why shouldn’t Google index it?
it doesn’t matter anyway, Google is clearly getting much deeper into the geospatial data game. its just more data to them, no different then web itself and there’s really nothing anyone is going to do stop them. in a year or two this will all be moot and forgotten.
cheers brian
I’d argue that this is a step back for those hosting parcel data on those map tiles. Now you have to worry about Google’s out of date property lines conflicting with your own. At least the lines aren’t on the Hybrid layer, for now.
Good point James! No Addresses and no APNs. The real truth will come when Google starts maintenance on the roads and parcels. I am already seeing missing tracts in the parcels, road without parcels and street ROW in the parcels without street segments. Like I said last week, it looks to me like they’ve conflated their aerials to match their road file.
What maintenance?
Adding an egregious example of a lack of maintenance
http://bit.ly/Engxq
http://www.thenewi64.org/
(google maps routing over an interstate that has been closed since March 2007.)
@ Brian Flood
I have no problem with them doing this at all. Clearly the reason they are doing it is for mobile hyperlocal applications. When that API gets to us, then I’ll be excited. Right now the parcels aren’t any different than the terrain layer. Pretty pictures is all.
Its a great picture, but thats all. I do feel sorry for County GIS depts that will now have to explain to the higher ups that google is not maintaining this data and that there jobs are critical in updating and maintianing the data. Now city and County officals will think that Google can just maintain this data. Free is not free and we must put a value on all the hard work that GIS professionals do on a daily basis. When we have fires floods, earthquakes or other major events we hope the data is accurate and up to date!!!!!!!!!!!! Data is always local to someone and accuracy and updated data saves lives and property.
As for the comparison between the new shiny GMaps and OSM, Ed Parsons gave a talk here in Dublin this week where he freely admitted that Google have been looking very closely at OSM and have copied aspects of the project.