Interesting Versus Useful

All Points Blog commented, “Read this interesting perspective on how Google/ESRI/open source are bumping into each other”. Interesting is a word loaded with multiple context. Jerry Springer is interesting. Howard Stern is interesting. But, so is Google Earth. I’m not going to take the time to dissect Hobu’s post. It's sufficient to say that it represents the type of sensationalism that caused me to jump into the GIS blogosphere and I wouldn’t recommend that type of post if I were in Adena’s position.

If you’re looking for something useful rather than interesting, I recommend O’Reilly Radar. See a recent post on OGC Integration with Google Maps. An older post succinctly covers the economics of Google Maps.

Sustainability is where Google Maps falls down, by the way. Google Maps also has no business model. It's not self-sustaining to give away infinite maps when the maps cost you. The obvious business model is to syndicate their local advertisements as they've begun doing with Google Local. That way I can build a killer app using maps, using Google's map component, and I syndicate Google's local ads for them.