Google Earth Outreach redux

Thursday, June 28, 2007 (05:10 UTC)

Frank at Google Earth Blog has a blow-by-blow account of the events at the announcement of the Google Earth Outreach project at the NYC Googleplex, Google's Rebecca Moore has blogged it, and the 1-hour video is now out on YouTube:

YouTube? Wasn't that supposed to be for <10-minute clips? Wasn't Google Video supposed to be for longer pieces? This is a good example of Google in action as it integrates two very similar services it has ended up owning: Do a search for "Google Earth" at Google Video, and you get results from both Google Video and YouTube. The Google Earth Outreach Conference video posted by Google appears there too, but showing a YouTube URL. Click on it, and you get to see the YouTube page as a frame inside a Google Video page. Google Video appears to be in a process of being deprecated — for example, there is no option in Google Video to georeference videos, something which YouTube recently gained.

It will be interesting to see how/if Google integrates Picasa and Panoramio. Yahoo! solved a similar problem, having bought Flickr and owning Yahoo! Photos, by deciding to close Yahoo! Photos without automatically converting all photos to Flickr but instead by giving users a range of tools and options, including a conversion tool for Flickr (but not Picasa or Panoramio:-).