Google Earth deepens crowdsourcing with Building Maker
Building a comprehensive 3-D model of the world is definitely not going to be a top-down task. So Google Earth is taking a page from the company’s crowdsourced success with Map Maker and is asking people to help create 3-D versions of buildings around the world.
They’ve kept the program fairly simple. You don’t have to create a building from scratch: instead you make it from photos that already exist within Google Earth and give them a three-dimensional structure.
Once you’re finished, the models go to Google’s 3-D Warehouse and require approval before going live in Google Earth. The company’s launched the project in about 50 cities.
The search giant’s crowdsourced data for maps has become so comprehensive that it’s allowed the company to move away using TeleAtlas and enabled it to expand in developing countries like Vietnam and India, where many roads aren’t even officially documented.
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About the Author, Kim-Mai Cutler
Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.