Google Open Sources Earth Enterprise
Written by Kay Ewbank   
Tuesday, 04 April 2017

Google has made its Google Earth Enterprise open source. Earth Enterprise was Google's product for businesses that wanted to create their own private geospatial apps rather than use Google Earth and Maps. The commercial service was shut down last month. 

Developers will now be able to use Google Earth Enterprise to develop apps to manage geospatial datasets.  The announcement of the move to open source means that Google Earth Enterprise Fusion, Server and Portable Server are all now available on GitHub under the Apache 2 license. Some parts of the original commercial product, specifically the Enterprise Client, Google Maps JavaScript API V3, and the Google Earth API, are not being open sourced. Google is continuing work on the Enterprise Client.

 

googleent

 

The move to open source seems partially to have been prompted by the continued use of Google Earth Enterprise by existing customers. The decision to discontinue Google Earth Enterprise was made back in 2015, when Google stopped charging customers for its use, and made Google Earth Pro free. Google expected customers would move to alternative products, but many have continued to use the free version.

The hope seems to be that customers will at least move their data and apps to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), but this isn't a requirement. Google says:

"For many customers, GCP provides a scalable and affordable infrastructure as a service where they can securely run GEE. Other GEE customers will be able to continue to operate the software in disconnected environments. However, we believe that the advantages of incorporating even some of the workloads on GCP will become apparent (such as processing large imagery or terrain assets on GCP that can be downloaded and brought to internal networks, or standing up user-facing Portable Globe Factories)."

Google says it will also be sharing a series of white papers and other technical resources to make it:

"as frictionless as possible to get open source GEE up and running on Google Cloud Platform."

Regarding the open source software, Google says that:

"Since GEE Fusion and GEE Server are being open-sourced, the imagery and terrain quadtree implementations used in these products will allow third-party developers to build viewers that can consume GEE Server Databases."

 

googleearthent

 

More Information

Google Earth Enterprise Site

Related Articles

 SDK for Bing Spatial Data Services          

Bing Maps for Metro Style Apps    

Getting Started With Google Earth

Getting started with Google Maps JavaScript
KML in Google Maps and Earth

Inside the KML Placemark

Excel to KML - a VBA program

An Interactive Google Earth KML Editor 

Getting started wth Bing Maps (Virtual Earth) 

Where are you from? IP Geolocation 

 

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

 

Banner


Call For Code 2024 Focuses On Generative AI
01/03/2024

This year's Call for Code challenge has been launched with a theme of the use of generative AI technology for solutions that aim to improve equitable access to resources and opportunities for historic [ ... ]



Chainguard Joins Docker Verified Publisher Program
15/03/2024

Chainguard has joined the Docker Verified Publisher (DVP) program, meaning its Chainguard Developer Images are now officially available on Docker's container image registry.


More News

 

raspberry pi books

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info