April 05, 2005

D'oh! Why Google Bought Keyhole

I've been raving about Keyhole to anyone who will listen for several months now. I hadn't heard of the company till Google bought them last Fall. But it kind of made sense. They had mapped the web, so why wouldn't they map the planet too?

I subscribed to the $30/year service so I could "fly" anywhere in the world, zoom in on the Eiffel Tower , or The Vatican , or just over to The Jake. I can scope out a golf course (in 2D of course), or "show" somebody the directions someplace instead of telling them, by navigating the entire route on the computer screen for them.

So I'm visiting my son's blog today, and he's all over the news. Google has incorporated Keyhole's satellite imagery into their Google Maps and Google Local products.

So now when you use Google Local to find a map with directions to a great Italian place to eat in Cleveland, you click on the Satellite button (at upper right), and get an actual photograph of the location, complete with zoom. Awesome.

Type your address into Google Maps and get a satellite view of your house instantly. The first thing I noticed looking at the shot of my own place in Google Maps was that the image they are using is a more recent photograph than the July 2002 image I get with my $30/year Keyhole subscription. So what's up with that?

It's bad enough that once again, "progress" means that some cool new tool I couldn't wait for, and therefore paid for, is now available free to the world. But I find I'm not even getting as good a product as the free version that's out there.

Perhaps my whining is premature. I noticed that the free version doesn't have the capability to zoom in as closely as the Keyhole product does. And of course, for now at least, Google Maps and Local are only available for the U.S. (no flying to Baghdad on a whim). And while you can click and drag to move around and explore outside of your original image, features like "tilt-view" and the slick navigational tools of Keyhole are not available in Maps or Local. Surely they'll get around to upgrading the image database for their paying customers, no?

Stopped by the Keyhole Community site and found out that a lot of folks are wondering and debating why they're paying for a service that is coming out in a free version. For the most part, they're coming to the same conclusions I am. The features of Keyhole make it worth the 30 bucks a year even if Google is using the technology to add value to their free products. Check out the free 1-week trial at Keyhole. Really.

UPDATE 4/6: Here's a news report on the new Google feature.

Posted by dan at April 5, 2005 10:57 PM
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