Google Keyhole, Google Scholar

baegucb_18706 writes "The front page of Google has a link to Keyhole where you can download a free trial of satellite imagery. Is it worth the cost for a subscription, and is it the start of the real commercialism for Google? And a challenge to MS's imagery?" D H NG writes "According to CNET, Google introduced a new service for academics called Google Scholar on Wednesday. This service searches scholarly literature such as technical reports, theses and abstracts. This service will not carry ads." And finally, reader [e-mail] links to some speculation about how a sufficiently competent search engine could write the news itself.

Not a big deal

[Staplerh]

So Google included Keyhole in its list of tools, which now takes another click (on more >> from the google homepage) to get to it. Heaven forbid that Google would do anything remotely business-like.

Quite frankly, Google is a corporation, and if they can help Keyhole get a few more customers (who need the service for whatever reason) while making a few dollars on the side, I think we should accept it as completely legitimate.

And no, I don't think this is the start of a slippery slope of Google into outrageous commercialism.

Re:In google we trust

[iztaru]

Yes, its interesting, however, it doesn't worth the money. You cannot find there any information that you cannot find anywhere else (e.g.: pictures from places that you want to visit). I think that Google is just trying to expand its business in order to find new ways to do money. The search engine competition is very hard these days. Google has brand recognition, so they must capitalize on it with other business.

EPIC

[jamie]

That last link, http://poynterextra.org/epic/ [poynterextra.org], is really interesting. But the key technological turning point, where Google comes up with a magic algorithm to combine and rewrite multiple news stories to generate a customized, nuanced, original news story for each reader, is not grounded in reality.

Rewriting English is similar to summarizing it. Using clever tricks, computers are about as good at writing a précis of a block of text as a dull 3rd grader -- every such summary lacks nuance, because the computer that generated it lacks understanding. All there is, is tricks. So the idea that an algorithm can be taught not only to understand the meaning of news stories that were written by humans, but then to rewrite them adaptively, is pure science fiction.

My favorite example of this is Cyc [cyc.com], a project to feed into a database all the propositions which some believe constitute "common sense." For example, Cyc knows that dogs and cats are mammals, and that they are common pets, so one could tell it "I have a mammal as a pet," and it could deduce that I have a dog or a cat or maybe something else. In the early 1990s, when the project was getting started, its researchers believed that in about five years, it would be intelligent enough to read plain English text on its own and understand it well enough to assimilate into its database. At that point, of course, it would start absorbing all the knowledge in the world until it became the smartest encyclopedia there was.

And then in the last 1990s, its researchers were again interviewed, and again they said that it would soon be intelligent enough to read plain English text on its own and understand it. When? In about five years. For any time T, strong AI is always about five years away.

So I'm amused that the strong AI postulated in that excellent Flash animation, the key which allows "big media" to die off because computers will do custom rewrites of amateur news dispatches and form newsfeeds of their own, comes to pass in... about five years. I don't think the New York Times has much to worry about.

Re:In google we trust

[Staplerh]

You raise a valid point in there.. it reminds me of those large bookstores that took the market share in Canada.

Our local Chapters bookstore (an extremely large bookstore, with Starbucks, music, gifts, etc.) popped up, filled with wonderful chairs and beautiful features. After they destroyed the rest of the market, had their captive audience, the quality of service declined - the comfy chairs dissapeared because goodness, it cost far too much money to have people in there simply enjoying themselves and not consuming!

Interesting to see if Google follows the same model.. at least theres MSN search to keep them on their toes! Healthy competition is good, for the enduser at least.

Re:Satelite imagery

[suso]

Ok sure, but I imagine that surveyors seek out the tools they need, they don't expect them to be on the frontpage of google.

What I'm asking is "is the everyday joe blow going to be using a tool like this on a daily basis for something other than play?".

Re:NASA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this not very similar to what NASA are doing?

No, NASA is doing something rather amaturishly similar to Keyhole.

Re:Satelite imagery

[swordboy]

Ok sure, but I imagine that surveyors seek out the tools they need, they don't expect them to be on the frontpage of google.

It is just advertising. Google doesn't intent to keep it on the front page but this is the cheapest way to get exposure for the service. Only a very small percentage of the people out there will need and pay for this but how will google get those people to do so if they don't advertise the fact that they've got this service available?

What's the best way to let people know what services that you provide?

Put them on the front page.

Once it gets a following and becomes well known, google will take it off of the front page and move onto something else. They will probably do this with hundreds of different services over the course of the next decade. Cheap exposure.

Re:lexis-nexis replacement

[jacobm]

More a CiteSeer [psu.edu] replacement, I think. The idea behind CiteSeer is that in academic computer science, most researchers (and most conferences and journals) make their papers available for free on the web, but there are so many of them and so many places to look that actually finding a paper that's relevant to your research is really hard. The CiteSeer folks realized that web spiders could do a very good job of indexing all those papers and putting them in a searchable form and that it was much cheaper (computationally, financially, effort-wise) than traditional approaches like Lexis/Nexis. CiteSeer has been available for free for years, and Google Scholar seems like it's just a much better interface to the same idea, so I don't see any reason why they'd turn it into a pay service.

another thought...

[mogrify]

Don't Google Keyhole and Google Scholar seem rather remarkably like beta versions of the Earth and Librarian programs from Hiro's study in Snow Crash?

Re:In google we trust

[yoyhed]

Yes, Google does rock (that Scholar service is pretty impressive.)

they seem to be having better and better ideas all the time...

Keyhole has been around for years, Google just recently bought [ecommercetimes.com] them. I remember using the software about a year ago when it was just Keyhole.

Re:Satelite imagery

[Bagpiper]

I found mapquest.com's similar (but free and now sadly missing) service useful when househunting, to get a better idea of what to expect of the neighborhoods I was considering.

It saved me the trouble of going out to view the house, only to find it shared a backyard with the local GiantSuperWigglyFoodMart. I could find this out from the comfort of my own couch.

Re:Satelite imagery

[moresheth]

I remember reading once about an in-car guidance system in Japan that shows you directions to your destination in 3d real-world representations, like playing an FPS.

Now think about how Google recently grabbed up a small mapquest-like mapping company.

Just thinking aloud here, how much would Google stand to leap over the competition if it were to make software that functions like mapquest, only gives you the ability to fly around, looking at the route?

then why can't we find obl?

[jasonhamilton]

If we can monitor things so closely, can anyone explain to me why we can't watch iraq, or afganastan for movement by terrorists?

Re:Satelite imagery

[Anonymous Coward]

brick/mortar learning institutions will become mostly vestigial, serving only to enhance vocational skills

Right now the vast majority of people going to college are doing it to get a degree that will allow them to make lots of money and/or do what they enjoy for a living. The learnng aspect of college is, at best, secondary to most students. So I don't think that all that free material that you mention will change anything.

Hell.. Librarys have been around for ages, if a person wanted to they could give themself a decent education using just the local library but very few do this because the local library does not offer degrees... Brick and morter schools will always be there as long as you need a degree to have any chance of working in certain fields.

Re:then why can't we find obl?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can monitor things so closely, can anyone explain to me why we can't watch iraq, or afganastan for movement by terrorists?

Well you can certainly watch troop movements, a column of armor is pretty obvious as is artillery or even a group of uniformed soldiers. But I don't think that watching terrorists is really feasible because by their very nature terrorists tend to look like everyone else and blend into their surroundings.

Re:Satelite imagery

[Anonymous Coward]

The $30 version is for personal use. If it is actually useful to your business I would think it would be worth the $500 for the version licensed for business use.