Thursday, September 29. 2005

Google and NASA Sitting in a Tree…

Google announced Wednesday that it will build a research center at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California and collaborate with the agency. While on the outside it’s a “memorandum of understanding” and NASA officials touting the agencies need for more tools to manage its data, from a geospatial perspective, the value may lie in data, as well as technology. Says an article from the Mercury News, “Google will also gain access to NASA's space data and imagery. Google already uses satellite imagery in its Google Maps service and for its Google Earth software. Google could enhance the imagery with data about temperatures or crop patterns, said Peter Norvig, director of search quality at Google.” I thought most of that data was in the public domain?

Update 9/30: Some are accusing Google of trying to avoid taxes by building on federal land.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 07:34 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

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Much Federal government data which is in the public domain is not necessarily readily accessible. Many government agencies are often not in a position to be able to widely disseminate their data (e.g. lack of funding, lack of staff, lack of mandate, etc.). I suspect (and hope) that Google's cooperation with NASA will do just this. NASA has a gold mine of imagery and related data - there are some incredible web-based geospatial opportunities just waiting to be explored Who knows, maybe the future for Google is to become more of the basis for online GIS ...

#1 Mark on 2005-09-29 13:07 (Reply)

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