If he thinks this, why are ESRI products so stratospherically priced, yet so technologically obsolete?

To paraphrase his associate Mr. Ballmer:
Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share, Market Share

Money’s a (very) distant second to the man with a vision.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jan/30/google-digitalmedia

Cheers,
Chris

“Now you guys all know the value of more sophisticated GIS tools and underlying data, but to most politicians and the ordinary public, it is Google that is the face of internet mapping technology, and it is Google that one way or another has helped to generate a public interest in SDI and (perhaps) the political will to invest in SDI. Because without all the PR and BS and simple fun around those Google web-mapping toys that Dmitri says could have been hacked together in a few weeks (which raises the question: why didn’t the Manifold boffins do it in their lunch hour?), do you really think the public would want to spend a billion dollars or more on a spatial data infrastructure in the current climate?”

Chris, I agree with you on quite a few points but not on the above. I think you may have misunderstood my comment as well and that we could be in violent agreement as regards data/software.

I think we both agree that the value in Google Earth is the imagery. It’s not the software for viewing it. In point of fact, there have been many individuals that have cobbled up viewers for such things in a weekend’s work.

To take a specific example from the company you named, their toolbar plugin for Internet Explorer, while not quite written over a lunch hour I think took not more than a day or two. I’ve heard of dozens of different people who have written image server modules for that toolbar or for the GIS system which inspired it and I don’t think any one of them took more than a day or two. See http://www.manifold.net/toolbar

The NASA WorldWind experience is also instructive: it’s not hundreds of guys working for years that’s required to do this. So, yes, I think my comment that a reasonably cool viewer is about a week’s worth of serious engineering for a small team (say, fewer than a dozen experienced people) is scaling it about right. Whether we’re talking about a week, or a month or even two months, that’s insignificant cost for just about anyone in this business, let alone for Google.

In contrast, the data displayed by Google Earth comes from hundreds of billions of dollars of mainly Federally-funded infrastructure and activities on a massive scale over decades. Add in the indirect costs of launch facilities and the like and it is truly an epic expenditure.

Google is now talking about launching their own satellites, but when Earth started that data was already “in the can.” It just wasn’t available to you or me or to any company not willing to venture the fairly massive interaction with the Federal bureaucracy that’s required.

As to making that data available in a bona fide “public” way, you should take a close read of the Google terms and conditions of service. You’re allowed to view that public imagery served by Google only if you use Google’s browser or Google’s SDK (as if a proprietary SDK is somehow required to parse an HTML string… that bit is air cover for the technologically illiterate) and even then your ability to use it is grossly restricted. No way, no how, is this provision of public data for public use. It is a private advertising vehicle kept on a short leash.

I’m not criticizing Google for that, I’m disagreeing with the implication that Google is providing public data for public use. They’ve privatized public data and are using it for private gain. That’s OK and perfectly allowed and good for them for showing the initiative to realize they could do that. It even has positive public benefits despite being a very private advertising mechanism. Seriously, good for Google for doing this.

But it’s not at all a remedy for the Federal agencies which kept that data hostage. It is the Federal agencies which are being crooked here – I don’t really blame Google for dipping a hand into the public trough. At least in that way some of the imagery sees the light of day.

But it’s that hostage effect that should be kept in mind if anyone is tempted to shovel billions of dollars more out of the treasury. Give that to agencies that kept the imagery already created under lock and key and all you will assure is that whatever new data (if any, a long stretch at that…) is created will also be held hostage until it finds its way through a crooked seam into a privatization scheme.

As far as anything Google does impacting the public’s willingness to fund SDI, well, the public “votes” for that every time they click on a search ad published by Google. If this makes sense for anyone or anything it will be profitable for Google to fly their own satellites and generate their own imagery.

But the public’s interest in consuming text advertising on Google sites doesn’t tell you anything about their willingness to finance any real spatial data infrastructure, because Google’s privatization of consumer grade imagery doesn’t really serve the constituency of people who do GIS eight hours a day.

If anyone is really serious about wanting to use Google Earth-like applications for improving the efficiency of our economy by leveraging the government’s investment in spatial data infrastructure, well, you don’t have to structure a multi-billion dollar subsidy for Google’s private advertising efforts. All you need do is a) compel the agencies to provide public access to their existing imagery and other public data – that’s millions not billions, a drop in the bucket of their existing funding, b) make it unlawful for anyone who redistributes in any way public imagery to claim ownership of that imagery or to restrict subsequent use of that imagery. You know, the old “copyleft” thing so beloved of open source types.

There’s plenty of data already. The problem is that it is not be made available to the public.

Note that none of the above prevents Google or Microsoft or anyone else who thinks that providing access to public imagery is a good advertising vehicle from doing so, nor does it prevent them from flying their own satellites if they think public imagery isn’t good enough.

I’d also tell the Feds to cut Google and other would-be remote sensing operators some slack – if Google or anyone else wants to fly a satellite with six centimeter resolution and launch it on a recycled Russian booster off the coast of Africa to save cash and get it into orbit quicker, don’t stand in the way of technological progress and willingness to take investment risks.

One last observation for anyone who thinks this has anything to do with economic stimulus: none of this will have any work product available for years. All it will do this year is allow an additional wave of bureaucrats to be hired in Washington, and there’s no unemployment problem at the Federal agencies. Any spatial data infrastructure improvements that come out of this which will have any benefit to the public or have any impact on real job creation aren’t going to see the light of day until 2011. In other words, a massive subsidy in this thing is going to have zero effect on job creation or economic stimulus in 2009. Mark my words, comrades, this is no way to fend off another great depression from kicking in during the next six months. All it will do is suck what money there is out of productive purposes where it is needed this year and catapult it in flames into some distant year where it will land as ash, accomplishing nothing but crushing people with higher taxes, further debasing the currency and adding the misery of inflation to a more extended depression.

“Google didn’t show any initiative, they just rewrapped an existing product called Keyhole Viewer, ”

That’s what I meant by initiative, that they did that and connected it to a large infrastructure of servers loaded with data and brought it out for the world to use. It wasn’t any real software development but it was a clever and insightful thing to do and getting that data did indeed take initiative. I commend Google for that. A good job well done.

But the thing about Google is that, while lots of important players could have made all this geo-data easily available to Joe Public (and could have done it better or more cheaply or whatever), the truth is that all those GIS experts and specialised GIS software companies and politicians and clever tech start-ups and corporate IT leviathans never did it. Google did.

Now you guys all know the value of more sophisticated GIS tools and underlying data, but to most politicians and the ordinary public, it is Google that is the face of internet mapping technology, and it is Google that one way or another has helped to generate a public interest in SDI and (perhaps) the political will to invest in SDI. Because without all the PR and BS and simple fun around those Google web-mapping toys that Dmitri says could have been hacked together in a few weeks (which raises the question: why didn’t the Manifold boffins do it in their lunch hour?), do you really think the public would want to spend a billion dollars or more on a spatial data infrastructure in the current climate?

I’ve no special axe to grind on behalf of Google, which is of course acting in its own interests like any other company, but all this bitching by GIS industry insiders seems to neglect the fact that Google’s approach has helped to inject new life into that industry by giving Joe Public at least a vague understanding of the potential of the SDI that he is likely to end up paying for. After all, how much of the current GIS industry in the US would still exist if you took away all the public money, from county planning, national infrastructure, natural resources or defence? You need taxpayers and politicians who can appreciate the importance of spatial data infrastructure. Google’s contribution has at least made that task of communication a little easier.

Anyway, good luck grabbing your own shares of the geo-pork, guys!

One point: “Google showed initiative with GE and good for them for doing so”

Google didn’t show any initiative, they just rewrapped an existing product called Keyhole Viewer, it sprang out of an In-Q-Tel initiative from years ago (http://www.iqt.org/).

Cheers,
GT

The Google folks aren’t stupid. They understand that when you take money from the poor and put it into your own pocket it’s more important than ever to cloak yourself with “Do no evil” nonsense slogans.

Google makes money at one thing: search ads. That’s it. They lose billions at everything else they do. They know that better than anyone and they don’t mind taking advantage of any opportunity to reduce their costs by looting the treasury. Everyone’s doing it now, don’t you know, and Google has already had a taste.

A good example of that is Google Earth, which was based in large part on the notion of privatizing the many billions of dollars’ worth of satellite imagery collected by Uncle Sam using public funds. [Yes, you bet Google showed initiative with GE and good for them for doing so. But the actual technical content of GE is about a week's worth of serious engineering for a small team: the prime value of the thing is the billions of dollars in satellite imagery it displays.]

I mean, no one in those space / remote sensing / big science Federal bureaucracies actually gives a hoot about anything but perpetuating their fiefdoms, so tons of data accumulate that the public won’t be allowed to have, until someone big enough like Google comes along to corrupt the right people. Oh, excuse me there, I forgot in Washington it’s not called “corruption” it’s called “public / private partnerships” or “cooperation with stakeholders” or some such facile idiocy.

So all that fabulous imagery that your tax money paid to accumulate and which was kept under lock and key to prevent you from using it got… privatized. All of us with extensive Washington experience know how that works. The feeding trough is for “stakeholders,” it’s sure as heck not for the smelly tourists, as our distinguished Senator Reid likes to refer to us taxpayers.

For the tiniest fraction of the money already budgeted all the agencies with remote sensing data could put it online for free download. They don’t do that because they really don’t give a flying hoot about giving the public access to what the public paid for. They’d rather pull down a few billion to study the problem and then spend a few billion more to make sure no one gets access to that data except the lobbyists and their “partners” that have corrupted them. Business as usual.

All that’s a shame because the wide availability of geospatial data does indeed help power the economy upwards. If it weren’t for the massive amounts of free data USGS put online for free download there would have been no way for the current crop of modern GIS companies to have gotten started, and thus there would have been no way you could get the most sophisticated and most modern GIS in the world for under $500. Widespread availability of free data has made it possible for millions of people to be using inexpensive GIS for all sorts of business and social gains. Considering how that has been accomplished with a fraction of public Federal data being made available to the public, it’s easy to see how uncorking the rest could accomplish even more. But you don’t need multibillion dollar payola for Google to accomplish any of that.

Please, let’s all be worldly enough to understand that a Federal plan to shovel billions of dollars into subsidies for Google has nothing to do with wonderful civic infrastructure growth or public access to wonderful new public data or any other such fast talk aimed at rubes. It’s just Google realizing that when the greatest looting of any public treasury in the history of the world is going on, well, they may as well help themselves to some of the pork. I guess from a worldly political point of view that is fair enough as political payback for Eric Schmidt’s support of the winning candidates – that’s how politics works, don’t you know. Elections count and to the winners go the spoils.

[Those who think Google's intent is public access to public GIS data should ask someone with legal savvy to explain to them the meaning of Google's terms of service.]

I have to say, though, that I feel so exhausted by the total corruption of trillions of dollars flying out the door that a few billion for Google doesn’t seem all that awful. I mean, they do have a cute logo and the search engine is pretty good and they have served an important public service in teaching Microsoft that it is not realistic to base a business on annoying your visitors (that whole obnoxious display ad thing as compared to discrete AdWords ads).

And, despite Google’s cat and mouse terms-and-conditions game with Google Earth users and their occasional jihads against nice people like the NASA WorldWind team, well, it’s not like it takes more than a middle-school level of programming talent to use whatever free data you want from their web services. So maybe they’re not so bad and perhaps if you are going to hand out billions for porn and people who buy houses with no intention to pay their mortgage, may as well find a few billion for poor Google as well.