Google launched its EarthBuilder product recently which allows you to "upload, process and store your geospatial data in our cloud. Your employees then can use familiar tools — (Google Maps and Google Earth) — to easily and securely share and publish mapping data,” Google’s Director of North American Geo Sales Tarun Bhatnager wrote on his company blog.
Google Earth Builder, which will be available in the third quarter of 2011, will allow those with large data sets, terabytes of imagery and other heavy computational needs to use Google platform for their own needs and significantly lower IT costs and eliminate time maintaining, scaling and updating software and servers. Just the ability alone to create custom map layers should drive a heavy user adoption.
This is part of a larger Google strategy regarding the cloud. While others have focused on infrastructure mainly, Google seems to be aiming squarely in the App space with this and their other cloud applications (Google Apps).
Given Google Apps 90% retention rate, this strategy seems to be paying off with a 100% Google App growth rate each year.
