Earlier this month (with Google’s logo on the side of the rocket), GeoEye’s GeoEye-1 Satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. While this satellite will provide images to Google competitors such as Yahoo!, Google has a semi-exclusive agreement and will be GeoEye’s only online-search mapping customer.
Neither company has yet to release financial details of the agreement, but Google evidently cares enough about this satellite that both Larry Page and Sergey Brin were in on hand to witness the launch.
GeoEye-1 will simultaneously collect 0.41-meter (16 inches) in size resolution panchromatic and 1.65-meter color (multispectral) images. Due to U.S. licensing restrictions, commercial customers such as Google will get access to imagery at half-meter ground resolution.
While there are limitless applications using GeoEye’s imagery in Google Maps and Google Earth, Google’s strong interest in GeoEye-1 is likely related to plans for Android, Google’s mobile operating system which should be the OS on some mobile devices in late 2009. Google appears preemptively buying mapping technology from GeoEye to eventually use in new/not-yet-invented location-based-services.
GeoEye’s stock price seems to be rising and it’s possible that Google considers GeoEye as a potential takeover target.
Below is GeoEye’s stock value over the past 3 months:
For Google, Digital Globe would likely make a better takeover than GeoEye. Although DigitalGlobe is private, smaller, and less well-capitalized, its corporate culture is more like Google’s: compared to GeoEye, it’s less reliant on the federal government for business, and being located in Longmont, Colorado, DigitalGlobe is 1500 miles closer to Google’s headquarters than GeoEye.
Unfortunatly, DigitalGlobe will most likely not be able to leapfrog GeoEye with a better satellite for at least two years.
Tags: Android · DigitalGlobe · GeoEye · Google EarthNo Comments
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