Not content with an apparent exclusive license to DigitalGlobe’s satellite imagery, Google’s snagged everything from the latest-generation satellite of DG’s major competitor:
Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery
Google has signed a deal under which GeoEye will supply the search giant with imagery from a satellite due to launch in coming days, the companies said.
Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery…
MapQuest, YahooMaps, and I don’t know who else are locked out. (Though it’s possible that their exclusive license with DG has expired.)
Tell me again about “Do No Evil”? Aggressively acquiring a monopoly seems to be skirting pretty close.
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
Ah, but Steve, you know it all depends on intent…
They just want to make certain (via a monopoly, of course) that public satellite imagery is presented properly and fairly, in a true egalitarian mode…theirs, after all, is (due to their obviously benevolent intent) the only proper, decent, non-evil way to do this…
And, naturally, to guarantee them truly massive profits from the doing - but that’s another issue altogether, of course.
Any “competition” would just be too evil to contemplate…
But, doesn’t a free market allow them that opportunity? Google spends money. Google bad. Well, then free market bad, too.
Yes, sometimes companies gain a massive amount of money. But they always, always lose it, too. See Kodak, Xerox, GM, US Steel.
I’m still waiting for Microsoft to lose theirs.
john, your comment, above, looks a lot like spam. Post a response this indicating why it is not - ie, that you are not just a spambot - or I will delete the comment and ban your site.
If it helps, Bill: The IP, which showed up for the first time yesterday to fetch a single post (”Did You Ever Notice,” just before this one), is from Pakistan, where there aren’t many guys named John; the referring URL is yet another site scraper riding the FeedBurner feed. Furthermore, the same IP submitted three comments in quick succession to this same entry, each with a different name, email address, and URL, two of which comments were dinged by Akismet, notwithstanding that they provided such penetrating insights as “wow amazing”.
Sounds like mice in the woodwork, to me…