Thursday, July 30. 2009

French Web Mapping Firm Sues Google Over Google Maps

Bottin Cartographes filed a complaint in Paris commercial court against Google France and U.S. parent Google Inc. The basis of the complaint: "Google strategy is aimed at undercutting competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gains control of the market." In particular, "Google is undercutting the market by offering map services to some companies for internal use for free – if they use Google Maps on their internet site," according to one report.

Bottin seeks 500,000 euros (706,000 dollars) in damages.

- AFP

Wednesday, July 29. 2009

Trimble Cites Positive News in Second Quarter Report

Trimble's CEO Steven Berglund reported guarded optimism about his company's "return to year-over-year revenue growth by late 2009 or early 2010." Such remarks have become rare these days and it sent Trimble's stock up over 14% by mid-day today. Berglund also stated that the Field Solutions business (generally the GIS sector for Trimble) experienced an 11% decline year-over-year but that decline should be tempered by the fact that in 2008 this segment demonstrated a whopping 63% growth in sales.

So, even though Berglund still believes there is significant risk in the market, the numbers represent "more stability in the second quarter than the prior two quarters."

We'll take any good news we can get at this point.

Tuesday, July 28. 2009

Podcast: The 2009 Federal Geospatial Data Management Oversight Hearing

Last week the House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held an oversight hearing on "Federal Geospatial Data Management." The committee led by Rep. Jim Costa, heard testimony from federal, state, private industry and professional organization representatives. Our editors look at what was said and what the hearing may mean for the future.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index.

Wednesday, July 22. 2009

On Falling Profits, TomTom Plans for More Cost Savings

TomTom said Wednesday that said second quarter net profit fell 61%. In response the company plans to increase its "cost savings" target by 50%. Number still beat expectations.

- Wall Street Journal
- TomTom Results Better than Expected
- results for Q2

Tuesday, July 21. 2009

Oracle Hikes Oracle Spatial Price: Why? Success of Google Maps and ESRI

Of interest to the geospatial community: "the price of its spatial database pack for the management of location-based data from US$11,500 to US$17,500" between June 2008 and June 2009. Also up: database diagnostic packs, database tuning packs and database configuration management packs which went from US$3500 to US$5000.

Continue reading "Oracle Hikes Oracle Spatial Price: Why? Success of Google Maps and ESRI"

County GIS Bid Snapshot

I just find like this interesting. This county is in Missouri.

Armloads of book-sized bids and maps were opened during Thursday’s Newton County Commissioners meeting.

The GIS mapping and publication bids came in as follows: Marceline Mapping of Lathrop, Mo., $185,850 without web publication and $200,850 with Web publication; Great River Engineering, Springfield at $138,359; VillaGIS, Inc., Hollister, Mo., $80,600; Midland GIS Solutions $211,500; and The Sidwell Company, St. Charles, Ill. $167,505 and $2.25 a plot.

So, the range for something like the same set of tasks runs from $80K to $211K.

- Neosho Daily News