The Good on Google

I wanted to help counterbalance the sensationalist blogosphere buzz about Google Earth and its effect on the GIS software companies. I don’t recall any buzz about an interview between GeoWorld editor Matt Ball and John Hanke who is in charge of the Google Earth product line. It’s an example of the type of straight forward journalism that isn’t getting picked up because

1. The GIS publications vie for our eyeballs and could never mention a competitor.
   
2. It isn’t yellow journalism that stirs up a flurry of comments.

Three days into this blog and I realize that I can’t just link to the Bad and the Ugly. Hence the post title—it’s not a typo. Here is an excerpt from the interview showing John Hanke’s perspective on Google Earth competing with GIS software.

I view it as a compliment to GIS. There might be some small areas of overlap where people are using GIS to do simple consumer kinds of jobs, but for organizations where people are using GIS to do real analytics that is not something that is part of what we are offering. I think to a large extent we are wetting people’s appetites for using geospatial tools more.