Google and ESRI Open the Local Data Floodgates

In a major announcement that was initially not entirely clear to me, Google has partnered with geospatial software provider ESRI to make huge amounts of third party data (live feeds) available to mapping sites and mashups. Google will be converting all the involved third party data into KML files, which can be searched and then easily accessed by local sites, mashups or third party online (or mobile) mapping providers.

In addition Google said that it was providing all the KML data that it was indexing to its API. That includes geotagged YouTube files, Panaramio images and tons of other files and data. Most of these data are tied in some way to location.

Now it will be available for free to others who want to build or enhance applications with it. It These combined announcements explode the amount of data available to local sites and the “geoweb.”

Here’s a video of the John Hanke keynote at Where 2.0 (where the announcement was made) if you want to see it.