[ghshephard]

Google Earth cost on the order of 10s of millions of dollars to write, with a couple of the key companies, keyhole and Where2, being acquired for approx. $40mm. [1] . Google Earth Pro is a small, but very useful addition to the base Google Earth - I know a lot of network designers who get by just fine with Google Earth, and have never availed themselves of Google Earth Pro.

The real cost, of course, is maintaining and serving all that data. I expect that Google, in offering Google Earth Pro for free, ensures that no other competition can slide into this space, and, I also expect the incremental revenue associated with the Google Earth Pro licenses probably wasn't worth the cost of not owning that market 100%.

This is going to make life for a lot of the other GIS vendors even more miserable than it already is - I can see MapInfo being annoyed by this decision. Just spitballing, but perhaps Google is looking at acquiring them (or a competitor?)

[1] http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-Google-acquire-Keyhole-(Go...

[7952]

Google Earth has never been a serious competitor for GIS. If they had added more features 5 years ago it may have gained traction.

It is great for viewing and creating small datasets. Viewing larger datasets required a surprising amount of effort in terms of tiling and converting. The tools built into Google Earth were never very good and people were pointed at server products. This was completely at odds with the simple ethos of Google Earth and often lead companies to invest in expensive ESRI products that offered Google Earth support!

Google are concentrating on server products with web interfaces and GE never fit into that. It is fantastic for professional users but Google have no idea how to sell to those kind of people.

[ghshephard]

I am aware of at least approx $500mm company that extensively uses Google Earth/Google Earth Pro for its modeling, analysis, and data presentation needs. In terms of data set sizes, typical sizes range up to approx 3mm-5mm data points per project. The engineers that use GoogleEarthPro also have experience with MapInfo, but frequently chose to use Google Earth, simply because it's easier.

I'm not suggesting that Google Earth will ever replace MapInfo/ArcGIS - but don't underestimate how much of the "lower end" GIS market that GoogleEarth took away from them.

[abruzzi]

Which is sad because ESRI desperately needs some competition. It always feels about 10 years out of date.