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Comment by ktta | Hacker News Reader

This feels like another service Google can replicate and be much better at it considering their past experience.

They already provide Earth Engine platform which is more complete both in terms of available datasets as well as developer APIs.

AWS product basically consists of open remote sensing datasets uploaded to S3. This is convenient if you deploy on AWS (transfer costs) but still have to develop all the data processing.

Google doesn’t do open geodata: they’re the only major internet company not to be invested in OSM in some way, preferring instead to build up their own proprietary geo database.

How do Bing (Microsoft) and Apple invest in OSM respectively? Also I am guessing you are not including Facebook? Or do they contribute as well?

Facebook and Bing were both Gold sponsors of the most recent State of the Map US: https://2017.stateofthemap.us though in fairness Google was a bronze sponsor

Bing was a gold sponsor of the most recent State of the Map (global conference) in Japan, Facebook silver: http://2017.stateofthemap.org

Bing has for years allowed the use of their sat images for OSM tracing.

Facebook is doing a lot of ML work on automated tracing from aerial imagery, which has great potential for mapping terra incognita in OSM. There are several bumps to be ironed out with the community but they're engaging well.

Bing has given OSM tracing rights over its aerial imagery for several years now - it's hard to overestimate how significant that is.

Apple (as you'd expect) has been much more private about its OSM work, but it has numerous people working on it and has been surfacing OSM data in Apple Maps in several parts of the world.

Bing has allowed OSMers to trace from their aerial imagery for years. Having proper aerial imagery is like night and day for mapping.

It used to be Yahoo aerial in the early days.

Sure, they can replicate much better and then shut it down later on.

I mean the second they decide to license their Google Earth data including the cleanups they do on it, their offering will be unparalleled. There's no other org who has gone through this expensive process other than google.

Even if they decide to shut it down soon, the value companies and scientists get out of it will be worth it.

> the second they decide to license their Google Earth data including the cleanups they do on it

Haha. Good luck with that. Google doesn't give its geodata away.

We'd all be surprised, sure. But Google's biggest bet is cloud and I think they are willing to sacrifice a few things for the big win.

Presumably you are talking about the vector dataset? I think most of the raster imagery comes from commercial aerial imagery sources (certainly they have no monopoly whatsoever on that). I think there are other global vector datasets that are broadly comparable, no? Streetview excepted.

Maybe also worth pointing out that Google's record in geo isn't without its failures.

You mean like spend a billion dollars buying and building a satellite imagery company and then liquidate it to a competitor for equity in their company?

Imagine if they'd never shut anything down.

People would be constantly popping up on HN repeating a different mantra about how bloated and unfocused they were (although arguably Google manages to be bloated and unfocused despite the shutdowns - but that's another debates)

Most of the Google shutdown's were understandable whether you like them or not.

In any case - it's getting tedious to hear the same comment on every Google related post. They shut things down. We get it.

I'm actually starting to find it quite amusing.

    > People would be constantly popping
    > up on HN repeating a different mantra
    > about how bloated and unfocused they
    > were

I don't see that for AWS.

All the services on AWS fulfill a need. Google often starts projects without direct profitability in their mind. Note that I'm talking about Google as a whole and not Google Cloud.

I'd say Google is a lot more liberal in starting new projects than any other company of its size. Look around in the news and you'll see how analysts comment about how Google has no 'direction' and is burning money.

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