Time traces

Google has agreed to license imagery for their mapping products from a satellite due to launch on September 4th. This new satellite can take detailed imagery for an area the size of Delaware in one day. What does that mean? Well, you could get high resolution pan-sharpened imagery for the entire country in around 30 days. Impressive.

The level of detail will be approximately 50cm per pixel — that’s just under 20 inches. If you want to see what that looks like, take a look at this. Imagine having a Google Maps/Earth content that is this detailed, 100% complete and updated once a month — that’s powerful stuff.

“The GeoEye-1 satellite has the highest ground resolution color imagery available in the commercial marketplace and will produce high-quality imagery with a very accurate geolocation. It is our goal to display high-resolution imagery for as much of the world as possible, and GeoEye-1 will help further that goal.” — Kate Hurowitz (Google)

And for bragging rights, Google’s even got their logo on the side of the rocket as pictured above.

Street View allows users of Google Maps and Earth to view street-side photos of the geographic locations they are viewing with the tools. The service has previously been available in the US and several other countries, but Australia only received the additional functionality today.

But a quick survey of the tools this morning revealed substantial gaps in its coverage of locations even in metropolitan Australia. Google’s road survey of the nation — carried out from November by a team of contractors in small vehicles — appeared to focus on major roads first, with side streets receiving less attention.

Patchy coverage … Wagga Wagga example
(Credit: Google Maps)

Local Google Maps product manager Andrew Foster acknowledged the service wasn’t yet complete, saying that Google was not targeting particular areas or streets and that some of the photos that Google had taken were simply still being processed.

“The goal is to cover all streets,” he said. “In certain areas of Australia, we’re still processing some of the imagery, and still driving some of the areas.”

“If you look at the imagery we have processed at the time we’ve launched, it’s extremely broad, covering all the way to a lot of outback areas, such as the Nullarbor and Alice Springs.”

Internationally, Street View has caused controversy amongst groups concerned it could cause privacy issues. In Australia, Google has consulted with privacy experts. The company has provided an option on the site to request images be taken down.

However, Foster said the search giant was currently fielding enquiries from people who wanted more coverage, not less.

“That’s the sort of feedback we’ve had today, people wanting more imagery in Australia on Google Street View, rather than wanting to remove images,” he said.

Foster said the search giant had already seen strong interest in the site from the real estate and tourism industries. In addition, Google anticipated strong demand from educational institutions and the small business sector.

Google planned to update the photos used by Street View “continually”, Foster said, as it did with all other geographical data in Google Maps. He said there wasn’t a specific timetable for taking new photos for the service.