The ESRI-Google Where 2.0 Announcement

Several geoblogs mentioned the Google ESRI joint keynote at Where 2.0, and All Points Blog elaborates on what it may mean for the near and far future.

From their conclusions: "These announcements have some important implications for the geospatial marketplace:

1. the use of and demand for ArcGIS Server should rise.
2. any geo data or services provider who wants to play on the Web needs to look at how it will provide findability and usability of its data and services in this way.
3. geodata-finding portals may, in time, become extinct - if the KML vision for search and distribution becomes a de facto one as well.
4. the technology may be available, but the institutional barriers to data sharing may still be blocking the path (as noted in a question at the end of the session)."

Also interesting is the GeoServer 1.7.0 plan to be automatically crawlable by Google’s geosearch.