"Google Satellite" To Be Launched This Week 280
Lord Satri writes "Well, almost. Google signed an exclusivity deal with GeoEye regarding GeoEye-1, the most advanced high-resolution, civil, remote-sensing satellite to date. This must be annoying for other high-resolution, remote-sensing data users since Google already has an exclusivity deal in place with DigitalGlobe, the other major civil satellite imagery provider. From the CNet article: 'Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery... in its Google Maps and Google Earth product. And as a little icing on the cake, Google's logo is on the side of the rocket set to launch the 4,300-pound satellite in six days from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters... Google, though, is permitted to use data only with a resolution of 50 cm because of the terms of GeoEye's license with the US government.'"
Re:why the (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The jury's still out (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason it's evil is because it ultimately relies on copyright law. This exclusivity agreement would be worthless if Google couldn't prosecute people using the images they display to provide a competing service.
Re:Precisions on the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the satellite company wouldn't afford a satellite if it didn't sell exclusive rights to the pictures.
I'm not saying the whole thing isn't evil, it's just a little more complicated than you make it appear.
Re:Meanwhile at microsoft HQ (Score:3, Insightful)
for once - and only once - in my life, I am actually on monkey boy's side.
google has too much power and this only worries me. I see no good coming from this.
Re:resolution for satellite like digital cams? (Score:4, Insightful)
the diffraction effect is not the only issue; but its worked-around.
recently, there were 'multiple exposure' (roughly) algorithms being used to 'look thru' the heat, pollution and general waviness of the sky, in plotting out celestial objects.
and even *with* diffraction, you can overcome it with sharpening. I often shoot my photos 'with too high an f-stop' according to common theory; but my post-processing overcomes the diffraction issues in practice; and I get the nice large depth-of-field that I was after with quite good sharpness, as well.
if you get multiple shots, exposures or angles of a subject, you can 'subtract out' quite a lot of noise and distortion. single shots can't do this but multiple ('high dyn range' or HDR) shooting can.
Re:Precisions on the summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me but competition is defined as somebody winning and somebody losing. Google is winning and doesn't appear to be cheating, how can that be anti-competitive? I wish you people would figure out that a monopoly isn't evil, it is the goal of all companies. Illegally suppressing your rivals is anti-competitive, cornering the market is not.
Re:Precisions on the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest concern as a consumer of GIS data has always been access to the high-quality, tax-payer funded data (which is usually aerial, not satellite). Exclusivity deals are fine as long as any data gathered from the instruments for tax-payer funded programs remains accessible without restrictions.
I'm not sure how deals such as Google's will affect this, but as the parent pointed out, there are already many sources of high-quality data from government sources.
If there is something to fear from Google Maps/Earth, it's the spatial imagery mono-culture developing around consumer and media GIS applications. Google's approach is by no means the best approach for all geospatial data, it just happens to work well for navigating large data sets. But, as we've learned from Microsoft, if enough people are using a solution, the level of technology present in dominant solution becomes the "state-of-the-art" even if it isn't.
-Chris
Re:why the (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you're limited to 50cm, that means that you're not going to be able to accurately identify a number of things. You'd be able to pick out a book on a table, but you'd not know what it was. You might be able to tell that that lady is sunbathing in the nude, but not actually see anything.
50cm is like half a meter. Most people are under 2 meters tall, and between 50cm and 100cm wide. So if you had a resolution of 50cm, you wouldn't see a 'lady sunbathing in the nude' you'd see 1x4 to 2x4 block of colored pixels. Try to draw a 'woman sunbathing in the nude' using 8 pixels. Now using 4-8 pixels draw each of 'borat wearing a g-string', a pig, a camel, a litter of cocker spaniels, a beige hammock, and a cardboard box and explain how to tell them apart.
For comparison the 'mario' in the original Nintendo "Super Mario Brothers" was around 400 pixels. And they had to dedicate the entire top 3rd to his head just so that he'd have a discernable eye, nose, and moustache.
Re:4300 lb? (Score:3, Insightful)
A drop in the bucket for a company worth 150+ billion.
Re:Gee I should have had a.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all the evil corps predicted to rise in the future by all the cyberpunk and sci-fi writers. I'll bet you not one of them was named "Google"
Re:The jury's still out (Score:5, Insightful)
The less friendly side of their stated goal, which they don't state as explicitly, is that all the worlds information should be available only through them
Re:The jury's still out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The jury's still out (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrariwise, there would be anti-competitive elements to an open agreement as well. There would be basically no opportunity for satellite competition, due to massive barrier to entry and smart pricing schemes by GeoEye. An exclusivity deal means lower resolution satellite data still has buyers, and google competitors could support the launching of another satellite.
Honestly, it is hard to trade things like this without exclusivity. You wouldn't want to buy rights to have Michael Phelps on your cereal if he also said he would appear on every other brand of cereal for whatever price they were offering. It would be worth basically nothing to everyone, whereas, with exclusivity, it is at least worth something to someone. Likewise, there is no point in google or anyone else throwing billions at GeoEye to become the highest resolution online map service if GeoEye then licenses the same data to everyone. It may be that the value of the data in such a scenario is not even enough to finance the satellite launch, in which case, the possibility of exclusivity is definitely a beneficent aspect of the market--giving consumers a product that would simply not exist without it.
Anyway, one really must debate the merit of anti-competitive policies concerning something google is giving away for free. It's not as though the market is going to drive down the price of "free."