Well, that didn’t take long.
Google has added photos from Flickr, Panoramio and Picasa to Street View. One had to figure this was coming, given the fanfare around Bing’s recent addition of Flickr photos. Check out this historic area in Prague.
Both Bing’s and Google’s photo integration offerings have different strengths. Bing’s Photosynth allows for a 3D-ish feel you don’t get in Street View. Street View allows for the integration of a lot more pictures, essentially adding area that the Street View cameras couldn’t get at, like pedestrian areas or this view of the same plaza from the top of a tower. And while it’s only significant to a percent or two of us, Street View is usable from Linux (Flash), while I haven’t had any luck with Bing (Moonlight FOSS implementation of Silverlight). In any event, I think we all win in this race.
Google also added a nearby option to its standard search page, which is extremely handy. Google can derive your location by IP or you can specify your location.
In any event, I think we all win in this race.
I don’t know if that necessarily follows.
While a duopoly is certainly preferable to an outright monopoly, and there are quite a few very nice innovations, the movement of larger companies into spatial has a few negative consequences that we should not forget.
Off the top of my head, negative impacts include the rush of patents that cut off competitors that do not have their own defensive patent portfolio, and the splintering of crowdsourced spatial information into closed warehouses.
All good points. With patent law as broken as it is, it’s hard to tell the motivations of companies and patents. A company really has to patent even the most mundane things it does now for fear of trolls coming after them later. I haven’t seen Google saber-rattling it’s patents at anyone yet. Microsoft, on the other hand… The sooner imaginary property becomes imaginary, the better.
Data is another animal altogether. At least with Google Data Liberation Front efforts you can pull a lot of your information out, but if I submit edits to their base map data, it’s theirs. That’s why I think they won’t make big inroads on that front – I would edit OpenStreetMap data first. But something like street view doesn’t lend itself to crowd sourcing due to cost and complexity involved, so for it it’s probably either a vendor solution or nothing. And I don’t like nothing
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