Spatially Adjusted

Tag: google

  • Google, ESRI and FUD

    Link – ESRI and Google and major uphill battle Update – Link seems to be back up now

    I usually try and not use FUD in my posts because I think the term has been overused, but in this case I think it is appropriate. Berlin Brown seems to have gone off the deep end in regards to ESRI and the “threat” of Google to their business.

    While, there is no doubt that any serious GIS user would consider google maps, not even really GIS. But, google has done things that ESRI and other companies haven’t done. They are agile about their approach. They started with just the street mapping, pre-rendered images and then moved on to satellite imagery.

    Of course one would have to ignore the plain fact that ESRI has been producing web mapping applications for probably longer than Google has been a company. Actually the problem has been ESRI hasn’t pushed their web services well enough to the point even GIS professionals didn’t know much about it. People fail to realize that Google Maps is just Beta and to try and build a application around a Beta map service is just asking for trouble (well actually you can’t make money off of your Google Maps applications so that isn’t a fair comparison, ArcWeb Services is really the only solution).

    GIS is more than just the image data. You have to worry about the geodatabase schema, uploading data, editing features, on and on.

    Google hasn’t touched this yet, but already they have momentum, so it might be possible.

    Actually this is the part that Google might never figure out. While at Where 2.0, when Jack Dangermond talked about this, all the Google Maps folks weren’t paying attention. Basically they don’t care or don’t understand this. Google is all about selling ads, not providing services. Anything they do is driven by the need to place ads on the web page. Can you imagine a company such as HP using Google Maps to show locations where to buy their products and have Dell Computer ads show up? Of course that is why this product will never move much beyond either Beta (which means that they can change the product at any time without giving warning to programmers) or it will only be used by “Google Maps Hackers” who just want to place points on a map.

    But, here is where ESRI has failed. One: they have not capture the WEB. Two: they are still operating like a big, bad company. High prices, shady reps, no real value, not agile. Eventually, users are going to go from ESRI to Google. Google is not GIS, but if given enough pressure, they could do it. Already, google has mapped the world with limited resources. Do you really think that they can’t help you create a magical GIS shop.

    I don’t think ESRI really cares too much about competing with the Yahoo! Maps and Mapquests of the world. They specialize in providing services that others can use for their maps. They haven’t given up on the web, they aren’t in the same consumer space as Google is. Now to call ESRI a big bad company is a little unfair. I’d love to see some backup to support this. I have never had any problem with ESRI consumer reps or support. Heck the fact that you can actually call ESRI over their web mapping tools proves my point about Google. If I need help I’m supposed to post in Google Groups? Not likely! We all know Google Earth is a nice application, but it isn’t even 1/100th of the power of ArcView let alone BusinessMAP. Oh and Google hasn’t mapped the world at all, they have just bought mapping from other companies who all probably use ESRI software to create these maps. Heck even Keyhole was a huge (and probably still is) ESRI user. The “Professional GIS Software” market is so small, I can’t imagine Google wanting to jump into that market and even if they did, how would they provide ads to the desktop? I can’t imagine having to deal with Google Ads in my applications.

    Bye, bye ESRI, it has been fun

    I’m curious, what products do you expect to move to? Probably none of them will be Google. If you need to perform GIS analysis, there are tons of open source products out there that are wonderful, but none have the Google name on them.

    I will even help you guys out. You need GIS momentum. Drop the 1million dollar price tag for software. Opensource some of your products(not all). Market. Embrace the web.

    Wow, with an ending like that, how can we seriously take the rest of the post? Sure one could spend a million dollars on ESRI software, but you’d need to purchase a whole lot of product to get there (about 667 copies of ArcView 9.1 would do it). While I do think ESRI should open source Avenue and Map Objects (when they “kill” it), but why should they open the rest? There are tons of great open source software already available if that is the route you want to take. Should ESRI mass market GIS software? I’m not too sure about that, consumers love Google Earth, but why do they love it? Not because they can perform GIS analysis on it, but because they can see pictures of where they lived as a child. You can’t build a business model around that. And there are few companies that have embraced the web as well as ESRI has. They have been producing web based GIS solutions since pretty much day one of the world wide web. Could they market better? I sure think they could, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand their place in the GIS world.

    Berlin seems to have bought into the Google hype, but he isn’t looking at what Google is offering. Sure visualizing your data is wonderful, but ESRI is much more than eye candy mapping.

  • Google Maps and the Transpacific Yacht Race

    Link – Transpac 2005 Tracks via Google Maps Mania

    The Transpac race from Long Beach to Honolulu is run every two years, alternating with the Pacific Cup. 2005’s race, the 43rd, got started on July 11th. Position reports from each boat are collected by radio at 9am PDT, are posted on the web by about 1:30pm PDT, and show up here some time after that.

    How cool would it be if someone took this data and created a ArcWeb Services application that had even more data in it such as weather? Heck ESRI should just do it as an example and post the code. A very nice mashup indeed.

    TransPac2005

  • Stefan Reacts to David Maguire’s Blog Entry

    Link – It’s social software

    Stefan Geens read David’s post and has an interesting take on it. Stefan doesn’t know much about GIS and even admits it, so his viewpoint is from an “ESRI outsider”.

    Maguire implies that Google Earth and its ilk are a fad, a bubble, and rhetorically wonders why people have written about it. He can think of six reasons: It’s Google, it’s free, it’s easy, it’s detailed, it’s fast and it’s different, (but read the post yourself).

    That’s sort of stunning, because to me, the most important reason why Google Earth and Maps are a runaway success is not on his list: It’s social software. Google Earth is an extremely compelling canvas that people are using to link their experiences in the real world to the web.

    That is an interesting thought. I’ve always thought of GIS software as social, but it appears some programs are more than others. ESRI always preaches GIS for the people and it seems that message is not getting out very far beyond Redlands. I can’t wait to see what Jack (Dangermond – Founder and President of ESRI for those who don’t know) and David have in store for us at the UC.

  • Google Shoots for the Moon

    Talk about good PR, Google has taken their Maps API and applied it to the moon landings that took place July 20, 1969. They have included the locations of the moon landings and some nice information about each in those nice little bubbles. If you zoom in really close you’ll get a great look at the composition of the moon (I always knew it was made of it). No word when gMaps Pedometer will be applied and we’ll get to see where they drove those cool moon buggies.

    In related news, ESRI has announced that the Summer ArcUser Online is now online. cough

  • Dave Bouwman Has Thoughts About How Google Will Make Money With Google Maps

    Link – Google Maps Future? Prognostication starts now! (dead link)

    Some interesting thoughts Dave. I’m sure those ads will be in there and the big question isn’t if consumers will care about them, its how will the developers feel about them. If you have to pay for using Google Maps without ads, many of them might be more inclined to take a look a more robust ArcWeb Services solution. Then again, if you can make money off of Google AdWords in your maps that might open up a whole new marketplace.

  • Howard Butler Wonders if ESRI Understands gPhenomenon

    Link – The Google Phenomenon and ESRI’s Dilemma – Hobu, Inc.

    In the GIS world, Google (er, Keyhole with Google’s resources rather) has changed the game. If you’re a long-time GIS’er though, you might not think so. In this post I describe stuff that any Open Source developer has experienced – mindshare, hackability, and momentum – and why these are important to both ESRI and Google in the race to be the dominant developer platform for GIS in the near future.

    OK, I made up gPhenomenon, but we all know what Howard is talking about. The new server side GIS is now expected to be “hackable” because of Google Maps and their API. I suspect as Howard does that ESRI will open up some sort of ArcWeb Services tools at the User Conference, but the question is how will they be received by the programming community. Howard thinks that the same programmers that are drawn to Google Maps API will be turned off of the “complex GIS” backend of ArcWeb Services and he might be right. I think it is a shame that ESRI will wait until the User Conference to announce such a move, but it shows that they are still in the “old world” mentality of magazines, email newsletters and press releases. The time between the release of Google Maps API and an open ArcWeb Services might be too great to catch up. The example I before was the gMap Workout Tracker and how far it has come in just about two weeks. Another two weeks and who knows what they will accomplish (not to mention who wants to change a backend that late in the game)?

    Howard then takes ESRI to task for not understanding the open source community. I’m not really involved (yet) with it, but I’m not sure that it really is that important to their business model (beyond interoperability and perception). Google sure doesn’t really care about open source as most of their tools are not, but business reality forces them to work with the community and the perception is that they do it very well. Howard uses the Directions Magazine open source article from a about a month ago to illustrate his point of ESRI not understanding their users or community. I don’t think ESRI could have played that article any worse as the first response was poorly thought out and then to retract it only made it worse. I’ve talked at great lengths on this blog about how blogging can help companies talk better with their users and it would appear that ESRI needs to take that to heart. ESRI doesn’t have to fear open source anymore than Microsoft fears Open Office. ESRI employees are going to make “bad posts” in the future for sure, but removing them will only draw attention to them. The best thing about putting your foot in your mouth is that you can easily remove it. Better yet, blog about it.

  • Users debate costs of Google Earth vs. ArcGIS

    Konquest Online posts about their thoughts on Google Earth (dead link):

    “I think that GIS producers should be humbled by the work that has been done at
    Google and Keyhole. It’s not perfect yet, but it was developped in about one
    year, has a great interface and is free. I’ve only downloaded Google Earth, but
    they also offer the software in two other flavours: Google Earth Plus (which features GPS integration, higher print resolution and more powerful annotation features) and Google Earth
    Pro     (with a ton of features and can be compared with commercial GIS) But the Pro version is still priced only 400 US$/year, compared to the 10 000+ $ needed to acquire ESRI’s ArcGIS.”

    While I too am quite impressed at the ease of use that Google Earth brings to desktop GIS, lets not lose site of the fact that is is only a viewer of GIS. ArcGIS, while more expensive allows GIS analysis as well as viewing the same and more GIS datasets that Google Earth does. Also ArcView is “only” about $1,500 and the 3D Analyst extension is about “$2,500”, much less that the $10,000+ figure quoted above. To compare Google Earth with ArcGIS is about the same as comparing Word Pad with Microsoft Word. To even list all the functions that ArcView does beyond Google Earth would take pages on pages of this blog. Don’t lose sight of the purpose of Google Earth, nor what ArcGIS is about.

  • ESRI is losing the blog PR battle

    It is pretty hard these days not to see daily news of Google Maps, Google Earth or MSN Virtual Earth. Click on any one of those links to see all the blog posts about them in Technorati. Bloggers can’t get enough of these services, but us long time GIS folks know that we’ve been doing this stuff for years with and without ESRI’s help. Google Earth is pretty much the same as a demo I saw Jack Dangermond give a couple years ago. Of course while we all know this, what about the average user who is now interested in these kinds of geospatial products. Go ahead and click on the Technorati ESRI tag link below.

    Technorati Tag: ESRI

    A whole bunch of my posts appear. That is it. People are finding my blog by using that tag, but they aren’t being directed to any ESRI blogger sites. Currently there are a couple of ESRI bloggers, but none of them are able to make the kinds of posts that would be required to get the ESRI name and their services in the blogosphere more. I’d love to see someone take every new Google Maps API website and show how ESRI has been doing this for years. When someone posts about how Google Earth is going to be the end of ESRI, a nice history of the immense task it was moving from ArcInfo 7.x/ArcView 3.x to ArcGIS 8 and how successful ESRI has been since then would be perfect.

    When you currently find stories about ESRI in the blogosphere, usually they are just “reprints” of ESRI press releases similar to the ones that Directions Magazine posts. Sure there is good content out there, but it gets lost because there is so much noise. ESRI has begun to offer RSS feeds, but again it is only on their press releases. Hearing about how some city in the mid-west saved millions of dollars because they used ArcGIS is nice, but people want to read about the Northrop Grumman Touch Table that was demonstrated at last years conference. That was impressive, maybe not practical for most people, but it got everyone excited. These kinds of implementations of ESRI technology occur every day of the year, but we only get to read about them in ArcNews or ArcUser and by that time it is old news.

    So what should ESRI do? First they need to find a PR blogger. Someone like Robert Scoble or Jeremy Zawodny who can help bloggers learn about ESRI and show the world what they are doing. It doesn’t have to be a “professional” blogger such as them, but it should be someone who knows how the weblogs interact and can leverage tools such as PubSub, Technorati and Feedster. Second, they need to get their project managers and staff blogging. It is easy to look at Microsoft to see how they have grown doing so, but companies such as General Motors are jumping on the bandwagon and you can see the results with the amount of bloggers that are commenting about their posts. Third, they need to offer up more RSS feeds of their existing content. I’m sure there are plans to do so, but the latest support documents and ESRI Developer code samples are difficult to find.

    I went to BlogPulse to see how the keywords “ESRI”, “ArcGIS” and “Google Earth” rated over the past month. You can see on the graph below that there is almost no blip for ESRI, even with the increased focus on GIS brought out by Google Earth.

    Esri google blogpulse1

    As the 25th ESRI International User Conference is upon us, I also thought it would be nice to see how they keyword ESRI compared against the Where 2.0 conference. I wonder if ESRI will see a similar spike later this month. With the lack of bloggers talking about ESRI these days, I sincerely doubt it. To ignore the blogosphere is ignoring your customers.

    Esri where blogpulse1