France Says Google Maps is Guilty of Being a Free Resource

February 2, 2012 6 Comments

You got to love France.

A French commercial court has found Google guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application and ordered it to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company.
In a ruling Tuesday, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses.
The court ordered Google to pay 500,000 euros ($660,000) in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a 15,000 euro fine.

Bottin Cartographes’ webpage is sparse on what actually they do that people want.  Rule number one of failing, sue the rich competitor when your own stuff  falls flat.  Clearly Europe has it’s eye on Google and I suspect we’ll see many more of these “judgements”.  And god forbid, don’t let Bottin find out about OpenStreetMap.  They dump just about anything on the market for free.

The French Judge in the case was quick to "pass" on the ruling.

Filed under Google, Google Maps Tagged with , , ,

It’s Only Evil if You Get Caught, Right?

January 17, 2012 3 Comments

From RWW

The official blog of Open Street Map reports tonight that someone at a range of Google IP addresses in India has been editing the collaboratively made map of the world in some very unhelpful ways, like moving and deleting information and reversing the direction of one-way streets on the map.

I’m not going to bring up the don’t be evil quote, but clearly Google is beginning to lose control of their empire.  Rouge employees do what they think is best for the company, but cleaning house won’t change things.  It’s a culture of attack competitors and apologize later.  I’m sure Google will eventually “make right” what happened, but what about all those times they haven’t gotten caught?

Googlezilla is a dangerous beast. It comes out of the water and starts messing with your pretty little town.

Truthfully, this is a management problem.  The chair moisteners from Sector 7G are being either told to do this directly or indirectly by someone else.  Hopefully Google changes their management style to clamp down on these issues.

Update:  RWW has confirmation from Google that these were two people doing unauthorized edits on the company dime.  Again, clearly this is a management problem.

Filed under Google, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , ,

Goodbye Google Maps? A Trend Appears

January 11, 2012 3 Comments

Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

We at StreetEasy decided to build our own maps using, among other tools, OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Google. And yes, the money pushed us into doing it, but we’re happier with the result because we now control the contents of our maps.

The free ride had to end for most companies.  But what is surprising is how easy it is to change your tile map service.  Plus see a theme here?  OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet is a trend.  Giddy up!

Filed under Google, Google Maps, Leaflet, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , , , , ,

Google Maps – The Game

January 11, 2012 4 Comments

In about a month, Google is going to release a game on Google+ based on Google Maps and built using WebGL (Sorry IE users).

…there’s a video preview of a new Google Maps for Google+ app – shown below – which uses WebGL and apparently user-location to collect points as you travel around floorplan maps. Full details haven’t been shared, but the game will apparently arrive in February.

Now the video doesn’t show much about the details for the game but navigating a 3d mapping world (using the Google Maps API) in a WebGL application in a browser is pretty awesome.  Plus going inside and outside the buildng?  Sign me up!

Looks like fun to me, but we'll have to wait a month.

It is a shame about WebGL support not being exactly cross-platform, but with a little work you can get it enabled on any browser.  Cools stuff is on the horizon with 3D web mapping applications.

Filed under Google, Google Maps Tagged with , ,

GDAL 1.9 Brings Esri FGDB and Google Fusion Tables Support

January 10, 2012 7 Comments

Good news for users of GDAL/OGR:

The GDAL/OGR team is pleased to announce the release of GDAL/OGR 1.9.0.
This is a major new release including the following major new features:

* New GDAL drivers: ACE2, CTG, E00GRID, ECRGTOC, GRASSASCIIGrid,
GTA, NGSGEOID, SNODAS, WebP, ZMap
* New OGR drivers: ARCGEN, CouchDB, DWG, EDIGEO, ESRI FileGDB, Geomedia,
Google Fusion Tables, IDRISI, MDB, SEGUKOOA, SEGY, SVG, XLS
* Significantly improved drivers: NetCDF
* Encoding support for shapefile/dbf (#882)
* RFC 35: Delete, reorder and alter field definitions of OGR layers
* RFC 37: Add mechanism to provide user data to CPLErrorHandler (#4295)
* gdalsrsinfo: new supported utility to report SRS in various form
(supercedes testepsg)

Some nice new formats in there.  How does it all work?  Paolo Corti takes a look and says, “Brilliant!”.

Filed under ESRI, GIS, Google, Google Fusion Tables Tagged with , , , , , ,

OpenStreetMap Has Momentum, Apparently

January 9, 2012 10 Comments

All joking aside, this is great news for the project.

Nestoria is one of those companies that was told it would have to start paying real money for Google Maps. When Google couldn’t tell it exactly how much, Nestoria kicked Mountain View to the curb and switched to OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative effort to map the globe.

A couple of thoughts about this article and OSM/Google Maps.

1.  Google has to tell people how much they are going to charge for their maps sooner rather than later.  No one can run a company without a clear idea of costs (well at least run a company for longer than 6 months).  While Nestoria could have done better due diligence before banking on Google, clearly it is easy enough to move platforms.  Lock-in is something that online mapping APIs do not have.

2.  Freyfogle is completely wrong:

… Freyfogle says, and they must render what Google wants them render — a criticism Google did not address when we asked the company for clarification. “You can make your maps look however you want. Rivers can be red instead of blue if you wanted…. With Google you’re not getting any data. You just get a map on your page.”

You can make the Google Maps look anyway you want dynamically.  That’s pretty awesome because you don’t have to create your own tiles.  He says Google didn’t respond to his questions, but I would assume someone using an API would know what it does (seriously, how can you not research an API that is critical to your app?).

3.  Steve Coast is still alive.  Hey Steve!

4.  OpenStreetMap is growing and will continue grow if Google fails to address the customer service aspects of the Google Maps API.  Leaflet is the key to gaining control over your applications (Nestoria uses it).  Learn it, use it, love it.

One by one, the Gorillas are choosing OSM.

Filed under Google, Google Maps, Leaflet, Open Source, OpenStreetMap Tagged with , , , , ,

GIS Doesn’t Go Inside Buildings Guys

November 29, 2011 45 Comments

Clearly Google doesn’t understand anything about Professional GIS.  30 years ago, GIS and CAD came to a conclusion.  GIS would work outside the building shell and CAD would handle the inside.  Clearly this has been respected for a generation of GISPs.

But in typical Google fashion, they ignore the truce and now their GIS system (yes I’m not crazy) supports inside the building queries.

Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The familiar “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. All this is achieved by using an approach similar to that of ‘My Location’ for outdoor spaces, but fine tuned for indoors.

So it is a stupid Andoid app and nothing more, for now.  But clearly there is an API in there just waiting to be used.  Of course New Yorker’s fear being tracked on their cell phones so it remains to be seen if Google will feel any backlash for tracking your cell phone (cue the old “opt-in” defense).

Now I’m not sure how stupid Google thinks users are though.  Is “Find my Favorite Coffee Shop” still something that people need help with?

Filed under GIS Tagged with , ,

It Still Blows My Mind That Google Owns SketchUp

November 2, 2011 3 Comments

Seriously, this thing is actually free for most users.  When it comes to design, designers always seem to choose SketchUp over solutions from Esri, Autodesk, and others [ref]Believe me, I know.  I used to work at one of the best.[/ref].  Now I’m not sold on this being something that drives use of Google Earth which I guess in turn drives use of clicking on ads.  Basically SketchUp was acquired when companies like Google bought things without thinking of how they will fit in with the company 5 years later.  But lucky for us, SketchUp has survived and thrived with a free version driving users to design on their platform.

Now the SketchUp team has new project called “Making Ideas Real“.

Here’s how you can pitch in: Use this form to tell us your SketchUp story. Send us an image of a SketchUp model with an accompanying photograph that shows your completed project. Anything goes for subject matter; architecture, archeology, industrial design, construction, woodworking, personal fabrication, model railroading, mousetrap design — as long as SketchUp helped you make it, we want to see it. Professionals, semi-professionals and proud amateurs are all welcome.

Sounds pretty awesome, I know many people who as a hobby recreate the world around them in Google SketchUp.  It also makes a huge 3D library available to the world for free.  Seems like a great opportunity for the geospatial community to share our models with Google and get some great recognition.   I love using SketchUp with my Wacom DTU-2231 Pen Display.  It really frees me up to work with 3D models how I think spatially.  Cool stuff!

Filed under GIS Tagged with , , ,

Google Charging for Google Maps API Access? So What?

October 27, 2011 10 Comments

Something happened that is not to surprising:

Introduction of usage limits to the Maps API

To assist in evaluating whether your site is exceeding the usage limits we will shortly be adding the Maps API to the Google APIs Console. Once available you will be able to track your usage in the APIs Console by providing an APIs Console key when you load the Maps API. If you find that your site does exceed the usage limits each day you can opt to pay for your excess usage by enabling billing on your APIs Console project. We will then start billing excess usage to your credit card when we begin enforcing the usage limits in early 2012.

You know what?  Good for them.  I’d like to think that proving good-looking map tiles with a great API is a good business model.  When Google gave away the farm, there was no business model.  Everyone just used Google’s tiles and thought nothing of it.  The rest of the world who tried to price their tiles so that they could build a business around it were beaten down (Remember something called deCarta?).

Now I suspect we’ll see some great creative choices out there that will give users with many options.  I think back to this great blog post by Paul Ramsey many years ago.  Now there is hope for everyone in this space to succeed because free beer isn’t sustainable.

Googlezilla's foot seems to not be coming down just yet.

Filed under GIS Tagged with , , , ,

ArcGIS Online :: The “WMS Release”

July 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

For those who feared there was going to be no Esri news the week before the UC, this happened:

Time to refresh your browser! ArcGIS Online is frequently updated, and a new update has just been published. This is a significant release with many new features and capabilities.

OK, so what is new in this release[ref]wait… release for a website?  Come on now, there is no such thing as a version number in the cloud guys[/ref].

  • Drag and drop add of data.  Interesting, but drop of GPX but not KML?
  • WMS support — I can only guess this is to meet some government requirement.  I mean who really is asking for WMS support in ArcGIS Online?  ”I’d totally be all over ArcGIS Online if they just supported WMS!”  Yea not happening.
  • KML support via URLs.  See the problem here is you need to post the data somewhere to use it.  Of course maybe the hook is that you can store the KML on ArcGIS Online[ref]I see a business model coming together[/ref]
  • ArcGIS Explorer Online supports WMS.  Again, I see government contracts all over this one.
One thing that did really catch my eye was this:
Coming Soon to ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Online Organizational Accounts
Organizational accounts and hosted mapping for organizations will soon be available through a fee-based subscription to ArcGIS Online. A subscription provides additional capabilities and tools to centrally manage individual user accounts within an organization, and to create and manage an organization’s hosted maps, and more.
Does that sound a bit like Google Earth Builder?  I suspect we’ll hear a ton of Esri’s response to Google (not directly because that isn’t Jack’s style) next week.  Could be interesting, that’s for sure.

Oh Captain, my Captain! Where is my WMS Service?

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