DigitalGlobe: Imagery on Consumer Portals=Advertising
Michael McCarthy, Senior Director of Business Development at DigitalGlobe made that point more than once during an interview on Friday. His point, I think, was to emphasize that while it was great that company’s imagery now appears on both Google’s and Microsoft’s portals, the company is really in the business to business space.
That said, when discussing DigitalGlobe’s first foray in geospatial portals in 2004, McCarthy described Google’s pitch to the company this way: Google wanted to be our customer-facing distributer. At the time, he went on, it made sense to set up an exclusive arrangement. The recent “re-upping” of that contract is non-exclusive. Now, as McCarthy put it, it’s time to be a “equal opportunity” provider. Recall the GeoEye’s deal with Google for imagery is exclusive; Google is the only online portal to which imagery will be provided.
Last week’s announced contract (press release) with Microsoft for use of DigitalGlobe imagery (both newly added to the archive and historical) is another opportunity to find more B2B deals. McCarthy can see the company participating in enterprise implementations of Virtual Earth. He noted that now it’s easier than ever for those in the enterprise to use imagery, but he quickly added, “not professionally,” by which I believe he meant, in analyses.
In the interview I did dip into the waters of metadata. I pointed out my frustration that neither portal makes it easy for end users to find out the date or platform of the imagery on screen. McCarthy noted consumers “don’t need or want that” (with which I disagree) but rather such information is available for professional users. I will note that the latest iteration of the API for Virtual Earth now has tools to access metadata.
The most interesting dichotomy in the DigitalGlobe/GeoEye contracts is the inclusion of exclusivity in the GeoEye deal. I wonder which choice, to be exclusive or the be “equal opportunity,” will deliver more money to company coffers. I guess time will tell, and perhaps, like Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ, acquisitions will tell which company ends up where.
