Gaia has posted two letters they have received from Michael T. Jones the Chief Technologist of Google Earth and Maps.

The kindness through which Google has made the wonder of our planet vailable to more than 100 million users around the world is now threatened– not by a menacing and fierce business competitor — but by you.

Ouch!

If so, we really need to have you take down that code and refocus your work toward building an open earth viewer that uses open earth images (such as from NASA)

Again, I offer to have the Gaia Devs come to our meetings.. we have one next week.

    Please understand that the Digital Globe satellite cost about 500M so the data is *very* expensive. We are like an iPod for Earth images. If people could get the music out to play on other platforms then the music companies would not allow Apple access to the music in the first place. This is the situation.

Hmm.. does that make World Wind a non-DRM, 20$ and just as good MP3 player then?  And how much did Google shell out for youtube?

If anything, it is interesting reading.  And again goes back to something that came up during the summer.. Google is saying it is Digital Globe restricting them and a Digital Globe rep has said it is not that way.  Would be REALLY nice to actually see this contract between Google and Digital Globe.