Google Acquires Keyhole Corp. 245
telstar writes "As part of their ever-expanding online presence, Google has acquired online map provider Keyhole Corp.. Keyhole's technology allows users to perform virtual flyovers of satellite imagery of the earth's surface. The immediate impact of this acquisition is a price drop in Keyhole's service charge. Beyond that, Google does 'not have any announced plans regarding how this technology will integrate with our current products and services.'"
CYBERSTALK! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CYBERSTALK! (Score:3, Funny)
Google search: my car keys
Google search: Weapons of Mass Destruction
Google search: the dog
Re:CYBERSTALK! (Score:2)
Re:CYBERSTALK! (Score:2, Interesting)
Who's going to register this domain? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, GMap.com would amke much more sense.
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:2)
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:2)
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:5, Funny)
Geyhole
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:4, Funny)
Goohole
Re:Who's going to register this domain? (Score:3, Funny)
What about Worldwind? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about Worldwind? (Score:5, Informative)
I've tried both services within the last week, and although I was impressed with NASA'a Worldwine, Keyhole 2 kicks its ass in a big way. The street name overlay and colour images make it so much easier to use.
Re:What about Worldwind? (Score:5, Informative)
World Wind is here [nasa.gov]. Just be sure to deselect "Landsat 7" from the toolbar (this uses NASA servers that are out of commission) and select "USGS-1m" instead for 1m resolution for the US. For some urban areas you can get much higher resolution and color by going into the "Layer Manager" under Images->High Resolution Terrain Mapped Imagery and selecting "USGS Urban Aera Ortho-Imagery". The topo maps are cool too.
Re:What about Worldwind? (Score:2)
Bad planning? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad planning? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad planning? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bad planning? (Score:2)
In their two and a half months [yahoo.com], they started at 100 points, and moved kindof smoothly up to 180. Lord only knows if that's due to irrational exuberance or not, but it's not due to IPO bullshit [yahoo.com].
Re:Bad planning? (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS IS breathing down their neck, do you think the wisest move would be to announce to the world exactly what their plans are?
Re:Bad planning? (Score:5, Funny)
Mua-ha-ha...
Re:Bad planning? (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot will run at least four front-page stories on the subject (including "Google Acquires Keyhole Corp." and tomorrow's "Google Aquires Keyhole Corpany"). Comments will range from "This is cool" to "This sucks" to "Well it's BETA, what do you expect."
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Neato (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Neato (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Googleing for people! (Score:5, Funny)
This is of course..... not true.
Re:Googleing for people! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is of course..... not true.
...yet
RegardselFarto
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
You read it here first.
Re:Googleing for people! (Score:2)
Obviously, but what is true is that they're using the technology in-house to correlate your IP address to your physical location. So when you search for something questionable, the overhead image of your home is automatically loaded into a cruise missile.
Re:Googleing for people! (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Maps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google Maps? (Score:2, Funny)
Like WMDs?
Mr. Google please help find direction from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Re:Google Maps? (Score:5, Funny)
Oooooh! Y'mean like "where will I be at 10:45am tomorrow"???
Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc = in Trouble (Score:4, Funny)
this seems to imply (Score:2)
Looks nicer than NASA's Worldwind :) (Score:2, Interesting)
Mission Statement (Score:5, Funny)
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Re:Mission Statement (Score:2)
Google needs real competition (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't care what they claim in their corporate mission statements. "Do no evil" my ass, I'm not stupid enough to take anything a bunch of suits say without a grain of salt. MSFT was an underdog with noble goals once upon a time.
Google's growth worries me, the way they seek to be the worlds largest advertising company worries me.
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2, Insightful)
As much a I don't want to don the tinfoil hat, I have to agree with you on this one. Google is starting to get its fingers into so many things, not unlike MSFT. Your post seems to point out the one startling difference... geeks don't despise Google. At least... not to my knowledge.
Is it possible that Google is the "Good Guy" and trying to undermine all the "Bad Stuff" that MSFT does? Or is this just a clever ploy to get all the /.ers excited about Google only to find out they've been pulling the wool
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Google seems to be seeking to own every service the internet provides. That's what worries me. What happens when mapquest and competing search engines dry up? Google could easily impose on every netizen a "google tax".
Just because it's free now, doesn't mean they wouldn't exploit such a rich source of revenue, especially with no competition to undercut them.
It's not tinfoil hat time at all. It always worries me when a single entity gets so much control over a globally shared resource like the internet.
Google creates it's own competition (Score:2)
If Google really does have such a rich source of revenue, it makes lots of sense for a competitor to come up and try to take it from them. So the richer they get, the more likely someone will come to challenge them.
Linux is of course slightly different because it wasn't born of profit, but born of the desire for a better product than Windows. Apple is a mix of both. We'll see what happens in the next 10 year
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's why that won't wash.
They have no competition at their current price point. Once you charge for a service, all of us non-subscribing, cheap-ass, "I'll just do it myself...better"-type geeks will do an end-run around you and give a better offering away for free.
Linux was first (and pretty much ignored for 10 years), then Microsoft said "hey, if we give away a browser for free, we can kick Netscape's ass!", then Netscape went and open-sourced and gave us Mozilla, which we can run on Linux...etc, etc, etc. Free (as in beer) usually wins. Free (as in freedom) is a no-brainer.
Google's rise to it's current status has a lot to do with the geeks that work at Google, and the geeks that are in charge of Google, so the odds of nefarious plot hatching there are (IMHO) somewhat lower than at MS. They built their business on advertising revenue, rather than liscensing madness, so aside from doing a good job and getting people to look at their ads, they don't have much to push...certainly not in the form of subscriptions (well, maybe a charge for ad-free searching).
Right now, the good thing is that Google is scaring the crap out of Microsoft, and may (eventually) force a change in their revenue model. Short term: Google is still good. Long term: Even if Google forgets how to be good, they won't get away with it...geeks are fickle.
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you give me a single noble goal MSFT ever had?
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Would I have ever owned a C64 for under $1000 bucks (at launch) if not in part for it's built-in BASIC interpreter by Micro Soft of Palo Alto?
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2)
Neal Stephenson, in his essay "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line" makes an interesting point that without Microsoft, there wouldn't have been cheep, commodity computers because there would never have been a market for the personal computer.
Not saying that Microsoft is good, only that they opened the world of cheep computing to the general public.
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2)
This is, of course, complete nonsense. There were dozens of computer companies competing in the 8-bit market (C/PM) and that competition pushed prices down. MS took off when the IBM PC came on the scene, and IBM could just have easily chosen CP/M-86 (or even the UCSD P-System) as the default operating system.
Plus the killer app for PCs was VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet), which first appea
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2)
With the introduction of Windows, a GUI based operating system that could be installed on non-apple computers, people could start using computers with out lots of training.
I think the issue that you see if a cause/effect thing. I maint
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2)
You don't have to worry unless Google starts telling advertisers that they are forbidden from advertising anywhere else if they want their ads to appear on Google.
You don't have to worry unless Google buys the other search engines and then shuts them down.
You don't have to worry unless, after shutting down the other search engines, Google Search only allows you to get Internet search results by using G
Re:Google needs real competition (Score:2, Insightful)
Even a cursory examination of the history of MSFT is enough to see that.
It is not a condition of becoming a large powerful company that one becomes 'evil'. There are many corps out there that are big and powerful and still manage to be good 'citizens' rather robber barons. It's all in the culture your upper manageme
Sweet! (Score:4, Informative)
Network performance (Score:2, Troll)
Their networks are fiber connected at the core on a high-performance ring from Neopolitan Networks, so there is no shortage of capacity on their end. That network can handle an order of magnitude more bandwidth than is used to drive Keyhole without even breaking a sweat. I'm also on Neopolitan's network, and Keyhole performance is great. I suspect the bottleneck is closer to your end.
Slower in v2 (Score:2)
Re:Network performance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Network performance (Score:2)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
http://maps.google.com/q=nuclear+OR+Cbiological+OR +chemical+weapons+-usa+-china%+-uk&sourceid=mozill a-search
Smart move by Google.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Smart move by Google.... (Score:2)
A satellite photo != a map; it's much, much harder to read, although cuter.
Re:Smart move by Google.... (Score:2)
Re:Smart move by Google.... (Score:2)
Of course,it's possible they have unsold shares lying about that they could sell, but they'd make money on that regardless of the change in price. It's just a question of how much.
They are, of course, flush with cash from their IPO.
Google + Maps = goodness (Score:5, Interesting)
I can definitely see use for this, imagine googling your intended location "Jim's Steakhouse"
Not only could google give you the directions, but a map, a menu, and an aerial photo. Sometimes aerial photos are AMAZINGLY helpful. You can see tons of things not on maps such as:
show me how to get somewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, that's prolly what GPS is for.
Better, Free, Open source solutions available (Score:2, Informative)
of course it only runs on windows... Open Source.Net
it may not be as geared toward streetmaps, but I have found it useful for finding back roads and stuff.
Re:Better, Free, Open source solutions available (Score:2)
They should buy anything they can. (Score:3, Interesting)
Buying other companies is a way good way to sell your overvalued stock without notifying everyone that you think that the current price is a great sale.
They have a Trailing P/E of 225 [yahoo.com]. That means their stock is trading for way way more than they're making. Compare it to someone like Amazon with ~1/5th of that, or GE with ~1/10th of that. Even their forward P/E (what they think they'll make in the future vs what their presently worth) is double Amazon's and triple GE's.
Mpaquest (Score:2)
Re:Mapquest (Score:2)
Looks like they quietly got rid of it, which is a shame because it was really accurate.
Could be the Show of the Century (Score:5, Interesting)
I repeat my earlier speculation that if Google releases its own Linux distro, with a custom desktop, integrated office suite and web functionality, they could end up Owning The World. Then maybe the sun would shine and the birds would sing, or would we all start hating Google and feeling sorry for MS?
Re:Could be the Show of the Century (Score:3, Interesting)
The latter. Look at how the slashdot crowd sees IBM as the "good guys" these days. They have the longest history of evil-doing in the computing world. I remember quite clearly the geek community cheering MS for sticking it to IBM, and crushing OS/2 before it could even leave the gate.
Now that IBM seeks to exploit, err "embrace" linux, we act like they're being run by Care Bears or som
Re:Could be the Show of the Century (Score:2)
Re:Could be the Show of the Century (Score:2)
Re:Could be the Show of the Century (Score:2, Interesting)
I know it takes time to integrate Picasa to Blogger to Google Desktop Search to GMail, but they need to hurry - Google has been successful because Yahoo and M
at least reducing reliance on yahoo and mapquest (Score:2)
I look forward to see if they can improve online map services and reduce the costs. The competition in email services has already forced others to improve. I would expect more of the same from google, which is a good thing.
Aimless aquizitions? (Score:2)
This sounds a little scary. I hope they have some unannounced plans. I'd hate to think they're just blowing their cash pile on neat stuff, with no clue what they're going to do with it all.
On this map... (Score:5, Funny)
Message from above (Score:2, Funny)
Sincerely,
The Greys.
I saw this coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Another undocumented feature is for flight times. Try SMSing flight WN 764 and you get the same reply.
This post was inspired by http://www.engadget.com/entry/8423209320818510/ [engadget.com]
When Google hits the Martian market, I'm golden (Score:2)
Re:When Google hits the Martian market, I'm golden (Score:2)
Re:When Google hits the Martian market, I'm golden (Score:2)
Hum... (Score:2)
Search Results for "XXX teens"
XXX Teens
Red Light Street 69 3rd floor Cached Map Link
USA Photo Maps (Score:2)
Seems potentially dangerous.. (Score:2)
Picture this...you enter someone's name into google. Right now, you can most likely determine their address and phone number, which is already kind of invasive to their privacy, but no more so than a phone book.
With the new technology, you could search on google, and then get a 3m resolution picture of the persons house and property. This would certainly make it easy to stalk someone (or plan some sort of assault on the house, T.P., burglary etc). What possible use could google have for this?
Keyhole is
Great! Better than Mapquest for route learning (Score:2)
I used this to get from Pheonix airport to the site of the legal conference I went to last August in no time.
I hope they keep up their "Where in the World" contest, I'm four for four.
Flyovers + Search = ... (Score:2)
Imagine this: (Score:2, Funny)
I can finally type 'whereami' and find out!
This is all doable with current technology...
If only it worked in Linux...
Now maybe they'll fix the copy protection (Score:4, Informative)
Never did get it working on that machine; had to get a refund from Keyhole.
Celestia and ground level detail (Score:2)
Windows only - any GIS for MacOS X & Linux? (Score:2)
On the subject, does anyone know of good GIS software (open source or commercial) for either MacOS X or Linux? At the moment all the ones I have seen are for MS-Widnows and I can't seem to find any affordable maps, that I could eventually write a program for.
Where Do You Want To Search Today? (Score:2)
How much for the latest Area 51 pics?
Text messaging applications (Score:2)
Since lots of phones can receive MMS messages these days, Google is going to provide geographic information along with your Google Local queries. And driving directions, too.
Re:No Mac version (Score:2)
Re:No Mac version (Score:5, Funny)
<google> Dang, there goes an entire percent of our market! I guess we'll just have to be happy with the 99% that's left running windows.</google>
--
listening to my iPod now, my PC shipped yesterday [slashdot.org] Thanks!
Re:No Mac version (Score:2)
Re:No Mac version (Score:2)
Re:Comfort of your own home. (Score:2)
Low Orbit vs. Geosynchronous (Score:2)