Why on earth does India need its own Google Earth?

So, first it was India’s overly ambitious plan to build a $10 laptop (or rather something resembling a laptop). Now, the country’s space agency is planning to roll out a rival to Google Earth, which may be 20 times more powerful when it comes to zooming (at least now we know why the country needed ...

So, first it was India's overly ambitious plan to build a $10 laptop (or rather something resembling a laptop). Now, the country's space agency is planning to roll out a rival to Google Earth, which may be 20 times more powerful when it comes to zooming (at least now we know why the country needed a space agency in the first place: it's all about innovation for innovation's sake):

So, first it was India’s overly ambitious plan to build a $10 laptop (or rather something resembling a laptop). Now, the country’s space agency is planning to roll out a rival to Google Earth, which may be 20 times more powerful when it comes to zooming (at least now we know why the country needed a space agency in the first place: it’s all about innovation for innovation’s sake):

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the sub-continent, will roll-out a rival to Google Earth, the hugely popular online satellite imagery service, by the end of the month.

The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), will allow users to zoom into areas as small as 10 metres wide, compared to the 200 metre wide zoom limit on Google Earth….

It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on $2  a day or less. It also follows in the slipstream of the country’s first Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1, which reached the lunar surface successfully on Friday.

Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the sub-continent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.

…The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which Indian cities are growing. A recent report by Gartner, the technology analysts, gave warning of the risk of relying on the "outdated information" used by Google Earth, which is now four years old and has been downloaded some 400 million times.

Last time I checked the Indian government was pretty unhappy with how the Mumbai attackers abused Google Earth to plan their attacks. So, I think we need some clarity here: Are Indian officials going to blur the entire country from this new service? Or do they deem future attacks unlikely (which is a bit weird, given what’s happening in Pakistan at the moment)?

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com
Tag: India

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