WebProNews

Google's various geography-oriented services, like Maps, Earth, and Local, have a new blog to discuss those services, and they swear they aren't trying to engage in buzzword proliferation.

The availability of Google's geo-oriented services, especially the APIs that enable other programmers to build upon Google's applications, has prompted Google to break out the standard blogging template and debut a new blog called Google LatLong.

"Things are changing so fast we thought a blog focused on this topic would be the best way to communicate with you," wrote John Hanke, Director, Google Earth & Maps, "both about our products and about the overall development of geo on the web."

The power of this geoweb focus becomes starkly evident when viewing satellite imagery of places stricken by natural events. Google Earth's before and after look at Greensburg, Kansas shows a place that moved from a pretty green community to a blasted scene of devastation, in the time it took a tornado to sweep through there.

Geoweb isn't a fully defined term yet, according to Hanke. "I expect the "it" will evolve substantially over the next few months and years as we (the geo ecosystem on the web) collectively figure out how "earth browsers," embedded maps, local search, geo-tagged photos, blogs, the traditional GIS world, wikis, and other user-generated geo content all interrelate," he wrote.

Google has started to push what can be done with this geoweb to ordinary Internet users. Through the My Maps function on Google Maps, people can create custom maps of whatever they like. That content will be available to others through local searches, via a "see user-created content" link.