SketchUp Hooks Up With Google Earth 139
zmarties writes "Having recently bought the company and 3d design product
SketchUp, Google has now taken the next step of releasing a
free personal version of the SketchUp software.
Currently available for Windows XP, with a Mac version 'coming soon', the program allows for
simple drag and drop design of 3d models - which amongst other uses can then be displayed in
Google Earth. The pro version remains available
for commercial use, with lots more features. Google are also introducing
3D Warehouse, designed as a repository for 3d models created in the program. The models can be viewed in Google Earth via a network link, so you can see geolocated models as you browse the world, rather than having to explicitly download them. Google has pre-populated the warehouse with a number of models which range from complete complex buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, through to individual design elements such as traffic lights and furniture."
Re:Vs. SketchUp Pro (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Blender is Already Free (Score:3, Insightful)
You said it!
We need an Open Source modeller that is as easy to use as SketchUp. That would rock!
Re:Who gives (Score:3, Insightful)
You can make the argument that if more apps were available for Linux, it would have higher market share. Unfortunately, not every company is (in fact very few are) interested in evangelism.
Even if Google developed for Linux and could yield the same ROE from developing for Windows, the risk of investment would be much higher while the return would not change. Ergo, it is not a sound financial decision.
(Of course there are many other methods of measuring return, but I think ROE is most significant in this case since it represents the money that the stockholders put into the company. In other words, it is the bang for their buck.)
The downside (Score:2, Insightful)
The downside to Google's approach though is that it has a tendency to kill the competitive market for the technologies that they make available for free. On the one hand, this is an issue of natural selection, if you're weak, you won't survive. On the other hand, people have blasted companies that have monopolies in the past with killing third parties by introducing "free" or "built-in" functionality that already exsists in the market. The most obvious example being IE. As Google continues to bring about these technologies for free, it's good for the consumer in the short term, but is bad for other third party developers in the short term, and could be detrimental to the consumer in the long term.
Google to implement Second Life over http (Score:3, Insightful)
The map server can be used to create worlds, the 3d stuff can be used to populate them. They can create new environments based on domains, so the real world domain might only have real world details. But they could also build another model for say Google Groups Clubhouses®©. We've been seeing people use Second Life for these purposes, what if Google made it so anyone could integrate a Second Life type feature into their website or web services application?
Re:Does Google have a Linux strategy? (Score:4, Insightful)