So, a number of us had been guests the past week to gracious hosts at the ESRI UC this past week. But in my passing with years worth of colleagues, the major question of the week I encountered was:
“Why are Google Earth and ESRI not doing anything? It’s just nuts!”
Well, grasshopper, one part could be that there is a “GIS Elitist” market out there? ESRI would want to protect their and their elitist markets and investments. This could be why Jack described neogeography with out actually saying it? The “Geographic Approach?” “Storytelling?” If that’s not neogeography, then what is?
Plus, I heard in a number of venues that some at ESRI feels the OGC process with KML is a rubber stamp. They let their concerns be known, but really didn’t feel like participating than stepping up to an arguement that, unfortunately, could put them in a bad light. Well, by not participating and starting a debate, they end up looking like the kid who took all his toys home.
Sure there are some things about KML that they’ll support, but the media stuff that they don’t. . . Hello, McFly! The GeoWeb just doesn’t stop at geometery! It’s what bring it its richness. Of course, ESRI probably already knows that.
As for Google Earth. I don’t know what’s going on there. I think they feel like they want to do something, but keep getting the run-around from ESRI. Otherwise we would have seen the migration of spatial operators that GIS professionals use on the desktop to a Google platform for MyMaps or Gears or something similar. ESRI could have a “Powered by ArcGIS” logo on a Google page or something. Rather than that, as time passes ESRI by, we may just have online geospatial processing powered by Google on their lonesome–probably through the purchase of GeoIQ or something–in the future. Then that’s when “professionals” really will start getting worried–kind of like what happened surrounding the MAPPS suit, eh?
Face it, whether ESRI or Google hook up or not. It should probably fall within the purview of cross-pollinating folks like us to make the hybrid of Google, ESRI, and whatever else built. If enablers like them don’t want to bridge gaps, then that responsibility lies solely on us as the geo community that has a diversity of GIS pros and neogeographers to make it happen.
Question is, can we bridge our differences too?
