Google RoadMap to World Domination [Infographic]

Alison Sharley http://www.business-management-degree.net 3m 855 #google

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

We all know that Google has slowly been mapping the United States and the world. This infographic shows in detail how far they have gone and how they have won out over the competition. Not only has the world been mapped, Google is now aspiring to build location awareness into everything. “Welcome to the future: Where your house keys will tell you they’re still on your desk at work. Your tools will remind you loaned them to a friend. Your car will drive itself to retrieve both.”

Is Google mapping their road to world domination? Historically, “open source” hardware and software have won out over the business monopoly, but will the same happen with data? Is a Google, a business venture, going to beat out “opensource?” What happens when so much data is owned by just one entity?

The graphic is titled “Google’s Roadmap to World Domination” and it has been published by Business Management Degrees. They provide the HTML to directly share the graphic on your site.

I’d love to see some discussion on the topic, and I am curious to know what other readers think of the information and the claims presented in the graphic.

Click to open / Right-click for save options

Text-Friendly Version

Google’s Roadmap to World Domination

“We want to paint the world, about one pixel to one inch.” –Luc Vincent, head of imagery for Google Maps

Welcome to the Future
– Where your house keys will tell you they’re still on your desk at work
– Your tools will remind you you loaned them to a friend
– Your car will drive itself to retrieve both
– (Google Promises a Self-Driving Car in 4 years)
– Tesla in three

Location awareness will be built into everything
And maps will be the operating system (of everything)

Currently: 20% of all Google searches are ‘where’ queries.
Giving Google 70% of the ‘where’ query market
Location based services keep smartphones running.

Components of Google Maps
Trekker stitches together a digital world

15 virtual shutters snap every two seconds
Photos are melded into one 360 degree image

Tagged with Latitude and Longitude
— 3 eight hour days with trekker down the Colorado river
Potentially yielded as many pictures as 20,000 yearly tourists visiting for 50 years.

Cameras like trecker are attached to Google’s self driving cars
25 of which have logged 600,000 miles in California.
Streetview has images in 1/4 of the world’s countries.

But it’s not an easy job, reconciling so many data sources:
Google has 2000 ground-truthers “driving” through cyberspace every day:
Reconciling map data and street view data.

Google Map Maker allows users to submit changes, honing the map even more.

The acquisition of Waze presents Google with real time map updating technology.

Timeline of Google Maps

2001 – Larry Page taking pictures of San Francisco with a video camera mounted to the side of his car.

October 2004 – Google acquires Where 2 Technologies, a company working on an early downloadable version similar to Google Maps.

October 2004 – Google acquires Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company working on an early version of Google Earth.

2004 – Luc Vincent’s personal project (20% of Google employee time to devote to your own project) is Street View.

2005 – Amazon’s search technology subsidiary A9.com unveils Block View, essentially Yellow Pages with storefront photos. Discontinued after 20 months.

2006–Microsoft’s Street side debuts with photo rendering of two cities.

2007–Google’s Street View arrives in 5 cities.

2008 – Google’s Oyster, or geographic database is greatly expanded with Geological survey data, buying of data sources, and satellite imagery.

2009 – Google Moon launched to commemorate 36th anniversary of moon landing.

2011 – Google Map Maker allows users to change maps, instead of waiting on GIS company data.

June 2012 – Apple announces their own map service for iOS6.

December 2012 – Google announces a Google Maps app for iOS, immediately becomes most popular app in app store.

May 2013– Google recognizes Palestine as a country, instead of redirecting to Palestinian Territories.

2013– Google buys Waze, the social traffic app for close to $1 billion.

2013– Google releases Tactile in preview mode, the future of Google Maps with 3d rendering of whether and buildings.

January 2014–Google uploads 370,000 miles of Street View imagery, largest update ever.

Google Maps API: the backbone of an industry

Companies Built on Google Maps API
-AirBnB
-RedFin
-Uber
-RelayRides
-TaskRabbit
-Lyft
-NeighborGoods
And thousands of others.

In early 2012 Google started charging for companies using:
25,000 map related requests a day
For 90 consecutive days

99% API using sites unaffected
3,500 large business deeply affected:

Big Business Left:
Foursquare, on 6% of smartphones worldwide
Wikipedia
And Apple…

A rival was born
OpenStreetMaps: open source
Backed by:
Microsoft
Hundreds of Thousands of individuals
Used by:
Craigslist, Geocaching, Mapquest, JMP Statistical Software, Apple

Overnight, 20% of the smartphone market, the iOS users left.
But were reclaimed several months later with an iOS Google Maps App.

Today: Open vs. Google
OpenStreetMaps is used by thousands of firms, including Apple and Foursquare.
(Started by mapping nerds several years ago, and enhanced by donations of satellite imagery from Apple.)

“Open” normally wins
Open Hardware > IBM Monopoly
Open Software > Microsoft Monopoly
Open Data > Google Monopoly???

But doesn’t Google normally win, too?

Original Source: http://www.business-management-degree.net/google-maps/

(