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Google’s Quest to Map the Planet

In this extensive NY Times article they chronicle the 10 year history of Google’s mapping efforts – it’s really amazing. Their goal for location based apps is for their maps to be the operating system and if you are the operating system then you own the platform. It’s nothing less than world domination and it involves the use of LiDAR on vehicles and backpacks.

It’s an amazing story.

2 Comments

  • The world needs a google maps for LiDAR. Take all public LiDAR data, store it on the Amazon cloud (S3 or more probably DynamoDB which already has a geospatial indexing library), and build big data LiDAR analysis tools using the incredible Amazon AWS.

    • @Mark – Click on this link http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/
      zoom into the area you want LIDAR from.
      click the 3rd button from the right (download data)
      choose a method to download (by box, by extents, etc.)
      click the elevation checkbox
      choose NED 1/9 arc second, then click next
      follow the instructions to download the data

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