Google announced today the acquisition of @Last, and their sketchup 3D software. To my surprise however, this one will cost users like $500 (well, you do get to use for 8 hours for free...) here's the announcement: http://www.sketchup.com/index.php?id=1439 Of course my next question is: how does this fit into the big picture? You know, the whole world domination thing?
It fits in like this: When google decides to make your site tank in the rankings, it sends you a 3-d picture of you going to the unemployment office
This is quite interesting. Google also recently bought an online office program called Writely. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they did that... they are planning on allowing people to have a "virtual office" courtesy of Google. Now this Sketchup thing also has very intersting possibilities. I can see real estate developers using it to design buildings for their developments and then insert that into Google Earth. That way they can show prospective customers a VR expo of their plans using Google earth. Pretty cool. "Hey, go to 34" 65 N, 21" 44 W and check out our new seaside condo development"
I think Google is on a "spend it while u got it" binge, and just throwing money at anything to see if it sticks. I'm glad I'm not an investor.
Now that would be amazing! In fact the possibilites are endless... (especially if google earth turns into google earth 3d, with actual altitudes too)
My hopes are for them to open their payment gateway soon so that PayPal is running scared for once and actually trying to please their customers.