Google's purchase of Keyhole lets the search giant further its agenda by offering a service that allows users to virtually "fly" to local destinations, measuring distance, tilting the view, and doing a variety of things that are impossible with a normal search. But has Google thought through all the ramifications of the service? Clint Dixon thinks not, and sees legal hazards looming ahead.
Google has for all intents and purposes now gone into the travel business. They also have positioned themselves to enter a new realm of providing "relevant" content. Google recently acquired a company called Keyhole. Google played this acquisition low key, and in October focused their home page on their new Google desktop search tool. Yahoo, MSN and several others of the major search engines apparently thought they had to rush to follow Google by releasing their own version of a desktop search tool.
However, over the weekend of November 20, 2004, Google changed their front page to present a new service named "Keyhole From Google." While everyone else was looking to catch up to Google's desktop search, they missed the announcement in October that the Mountain Valley search giant had acquired Keyhole.
While Google flipped the front page they also dropped the announcement of their desktop search appliance like a hot potato. When you watch the enemy's front too intently you often miss them flanking you. Apparently MSN and Yahoo were wearing blinders. And as most people know, whomever is first to market with a killer application or technology is often the owner of largest slice of market share.
Keyhole http://www.keyhole.com/ is a new technology that allows anyone to use his or her desktop to search the world with a bird's eye view. Keyhole is the 3D digital earth pioneer. They are the only company to deliver a 3D digital model view of the entire earth via the Internet. Keyhole's groundbreaking EarthStream™ technology combines advanced 3 dimensional graphics and Internet network streaming innovations to produce a high performance system, which runs on personal computers and servers as well.
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