Google Adds Another Gem To Its Collection – Panoramio

Posted by Svetlana Gladkova on May 31st, 2007

Google has announced that it is going to buy Panoramio for an undisclosed amount to add it to its Google Geo product mix (Google Earth and Google Maps). For those of you who don't know yet, Panoramio is a photo hosting website that in addition to offering you free 2 Gb for photos storage allows you to organize and locate photos by linking them to the places where they were taken. This service also enables you to explore the world by looking at photos of various places shot by other people. This actually sounds like a good tool to find out some important information for your pending trip (being able to actually look at photos of the hotel you are going to stay in, decide weather those places of interest mentioned in the travel guide are of personal interest to you, etc.). Moreover, this community site enables other people to tag your photos, thus correcting or making more specific their location . Panoramio also provides web developers with an API so that they could embed the website's functionality into their websites.

Google has been using Panoramio since the beginning of the year when Panoramio photos were introduced as a default layer in Google Earth (and if you use Google Earth you might have already noticed Panoramio photos there). After the acquisition we can expect a deeper integration of some kind though Google promises everything will remain the same for existing users “for the time being” (but it is evident that eventually everything will transfer to your Google accounts). Google blog does not explain how exactly the integration will work, especially since the integration is quite deep even now. So it seems to me that Google is simply trying to secure its position with Panoramio since the technology and community of professional and amateur photographers definitely look like a valuable addition to Google current service.

Panoramio in its turn hopes that the acquisition will ensure additional advantages to users because they will work on a more powerful Google infrastructure which will make Panoramio service more reliable. Besides, Panoramio layer in Google Earth will be updated more frequently which is obviously a plus to both Google Earth and Panoramio.

Anyway Google makes its online presence more visible every day and this acquisition is another indication of this. I do believe that for developers of some innovative applications being purchased by a giant that Google is can be an advantage and provides additional opportunities for further development and growth.

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