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Skybox Imaging + Google

skyboximaging.com

112 pointsuptown26 comments

SkyBox was going to bring democracy to the monopolistic wholesale satellite imagery market. SkyBox was disruptive, attacking issues of cost and recency with a novel, inexpensive satellite constellation. The only other real provider is DigitalGlobe.

With Google buying SkyBox, it's going to be one huge, closed monster vs. another, both of which are hostile to free maps.

SkyBox was meaningful to the OpenStreetMap movement, in being a source for recent, traceable imagery. Their existence alone put pressure on DigitalGlobe continue to evolve and innovate. The capital markets see it as Google eating up some of DG's market, but it has bigger consequences to the free maps I care about: http://seekingalpha.com/news/1665313-digitalglobe-sells-off-...

I know it's cliched on HN to boo acquisitions, but BOOOOOOO.

It's a repeat of Sparrow. Given the current structure of the industry, technology has a higher value as a strategic component of a giant than as an independent company.

> SkyBox was meaningful to the OpenStreetMap movement, in being a source for recent, traceable imagery.

I really don't feel like it is that important. Right now OpenStreetMap is still lacking active contributors more than anything.

In the long run OSM will offer better data under a less restrictive license which google simply does not offer. That alone will create demand for satellite imagery by mapping providers like MapBox as their customers want that.

How many contributors does OpenStreetMap need?

From what I've been able to discern, OSM's road data is reasonably complete. Place data perhaps not as much. Is that the gap that you foresee additional contributors filling?

Road data is largely complete in Western Europe and getting there in Eastern Europe. In much of the US, it's still raw USGS TIGER data, which is very low quality and needs fixing. Asia, South America etc. are much patchier.

Address coverage is almost universally poor.

POI coverage is patchy: landmarks are often well surveyed, businesses less so.

I don't understand why you think SkyBox are so disruptive. The best reason for using satellite imagery is currency, and the expansive coverage. If the SkyBox offering is better at those two things why would you also make it cheaper? If an oil company are willing to spend thousands on the best available data why would you sell it for less? I just don't see the market for cheap rapid imagery.

SkyBox was not the only or best player on the block - they just happened to be based in Mountain View. Meanwhile DG is fat happy and slow. It's a market ripe for disruption so expect it.

I wonder what the implications are for OpenStreetMap. Skybox was playing nice with OSM and Mapbox -- https://www.mapbox.com/blog/skybox-mapbox-integration/

The MapBox Satellite layer available for tracing into OSM is sourced from DigitalGlobe[1], not Skybox, so it shouldn't affect OSM.

[1] https://www.mapbox.com/help/mapbox-satellite-sources/

I think he's talking about mapbox's custom tasking that's still kinda being worked on. You'll be able to request fresh imagery through mapbox, that will be tasked to skybox (among others) through their apis.

[1] https://www.mapbox.com/blog/interfaces-for-visualizing-rapid...

[2] https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-satellite-live-firstlook/

This was always one of those "not if, but when" acquisitions in my opinion. Seems like a perfect fit for the trajectory Google's been headed, and the company was already based out of Mountain View.

A great acquisition of a group of really smart people doing interesting work. This is the kind of company Apple should have been looking at acquiring if it wants to ever truly compete with Google in mapping and online services in general.

Does anyone know why you have to purchase a 2.4m dish antenna and two FULL RACKS of equipment to schedule image acquisitions and download images? Why does each customer need to be able to communicate with the satellites directly instead of via a web interface?

Maybe they're distributed ground stations and all clients are contributing to the network of receivers?

Yes, low orbit satellites need lots of ground stations, lots of storage, or lots of bandwidth.

I believe the ground station is optional. It's for organizations who want their data _really_ fast, before it would be available on the web interface.

If Apple cares about maps maybe it should acquire Planet Labs (http://www.planet.com/) to compete with Google?

Close, but Planet says their Dove sats are limited to 3-5 meters, whereas Skybox's sats are submeter resolution. Planet seems to have more of a change detection mission over a quality mission. Skybox also does video, which I'm not sure about with Planet.

Every other great startup that's building something cool, something innovative is being acquired by Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on. Aren't we going to see the next Google or Facebook, because they are all being acquired by, well, Google or Facebook :|

Congratulations! The cofounders were invited to a Stanford Ecorner lecture a year ago, worth to check: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3053

Any idea or links on what the background of the founders is? How do you get trained in the kind of technology that a startup of this kind needs?

Their company page has bios of a bunch of the key people:

http://www.skyboximaging.com/company

Lots of engineering degrees and experience at aerospace companies.

Get into the graduate program at Cornell or CMU.

Why do they capture the horizontal scrolling so that they can vertically scroll?

Because they are more concerned with satellites.

I assume they could use these to help self-driving cars, too? Could spot obstacles or accidents that are about to happen way before they happen.

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