Say Hello to Advertisers in Google Earth

Link - Ads Coming to Google Earth

apparently you can expect to see some form of onscreen advertising in GE soon. But, to turn them off you will need to have a subscription of Google Earth Plus or Pro. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented and what the reaction will be from the general GE users.

Well there goes the reason to use Google Earth. Who wants to create a KML and then have Google earn money off of my work? I said back in August that Google was an advertising company and it becomes clear that is what Google Earth is to them, ad revenue. All these really nice Google Earth KML/KMZ hacks” are now going to be used to further increase Google’s revenue.

Most of us knew this day was coming and unfortunately it is just about here. It will be interesting to see how it all works, will downloading any KML files from PortlandMaps get me results for real estate agents, mortgage refinance companies and probably Vioxx ads? The implications of this are huge as eBay ads for just about anything can now be fed to users just trying to find out voting districts in their home towns.

The sooner ArcGIS Explorer is out the better it will be for those who want to distribute maps to the general populace. KML still is important, but Google Earth has become so much less relevant to my workflow.


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Date
November 7, 2005