One more thing ...
and help freeing data by lobbying, mainly among government agencies...
This is not really a viable option. The hi-res imagery comes from DigitalGlobe in google's case which is a private for-profit entity. The government (US) operates moderate and low-res imagers (MODIS, Landsat, NOAA, GOES etc), and they have generally done everything to make this data freely available. I.e. my company (globalimaging.com) makes ground receive systems for all these birds, and the data comes down on free direct broadcast. Other governments are not as free with their data. Jeff On 12/15/06, Jeffrey Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It's right there on the main gaia page http://gaia.serezhkin.com/ An excerpt ---- We have in the past and continue to license very expensive data to make Google Earth and Google Maps products. The terms of the license that we signed include a promise by us to prevent anyone from accessing the data other than through Google software. Violations of this promise (such as Gaia source out in the world) not only cost us money and force the disruption by forced upgrade of 100M+ users as we change protocols, they actually put our entire operation at risk since the data providers loose trust that their data, which they sell directly, is out there for free and could put them out of business. Please understand that the Digital Globe satellite cost about $500M so the data is *very* expensive. We are like an iPod for Earth images. If people could get the music out to play on other platforms then the music companies would not allow Apple access to the music in the first place. This is the situation. --- I for one have no qualms about caching this data for use in other applications. It's not like I don't use their interfaces (GE and gmaps), but as long as there are no suitable alternatives for applications that do not violate their license (like maemo mapper on my Nokia 770 where google maps works terribly) I am going to use it. I don't see any sort of legal wrangling over Maemo mapper which clearly violates the usage agreement. I don't know what you are trying to achieve with your own globe app that can't be done with Google Earth and KML, but I can't imagine google sending you a cease and desist letter about your in-house use. Of course if you try to profit from this application, or make it open source (ala the gaia project), you will hear from their lawyers. Anyway, good luck, keep us posted. Jeff On 12/15/06, Nelson Minar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Vincent Picavet wrote: > > Data, and especially high resolution data, are as for now, very expensive > (google said more than $500M for their data). > > That's a very interesting number; where did Google say that? Did they say > anything else? > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > > >
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