Google announced a data API for Maps this morning in San Jose. This is basically a CRUD service for storing geodata in “the cloud” that leverages Atom in lots of ways. That didn’t sound very world-shaking to me at first since there aren’t even any basic spatial query functions, but there are some ways in which this could be a game-changing service — if you trust Google to be your data custodian.
- you’re freed from figuring out how to store your data
- web and phone data creation APIs come free
- base maps come free too
I’ve felt something like this has been needed for a long time. In my past life doing GIS for urban planning a lot of great initiatives got bogged down by the complexities of how and where to store data and who would administer it after the MIT “techies” left. Hopefully this kind of service gets us over that hurdle.
It will be very interesting to see the uptake of this.
