Google Asks Gaia Project To Shut Down
The Gaia project, an attempt to reverse engineer Google Earth to create an open source version, was shut down by its owner over the weekend.
It seems Google was worried that Gaia’s success would threaten Google Earth because of the licensing agreements Google Earth has with map and data providers which stipulates that the maps not be used outside Google’s specific software clients.
It doesn’t appear that Google resorted to lawyers or cease-and-desist letters, rather the developer of Gaia was contacted directly by Michael Jones, Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Local search.
According to Jones in a letter posted on the Gaia site:
The data that we license for Google Earth and Google Maps is made available for use under the restriction that it not be accessed or used outside of Google’s client software. These products — Earth, Maps, and Mobile Maps — each have a data protection mechanism tailored to their environment.
…
In all three cases, the ToS are very clear that the data services used by the client software must never be accessed directly and that the
encryption, passkey, and other data protection mechanisms must not be circumvented.
Kudos to Google for not resorting to threatening lawsuits and an equal measure of praise to Gaia’s developer for taking the project down, but that said, it’s still a shame to see the Gaia project disappear. Perhaps someone could convince the data companies to loosen their license restrictions a bit.
Otherwise, any attempt to create an open source program similar to Google Earth will need to start from scratch and use open earth images from NASA or similar and such a project is certainly not for the faint of heart.
