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Information has value. But this 'information' is free. Who, and why did someone pay to have these photos taken?

It takes the better part of a Franklin to get a plunber or locksmith just to ring your doorbell.

I typed in my Mom's home address and found my F-250 in the driveway. Someone paid to have the photo taken, mated the photo to an address, and posted it on the 'net. So where is the payback to compensate for the investment?

salty

saltydog wrote:Information has value. But this 'information' is free. Who, and why did someone pay to have these photos taken?

It takes the better part of a Franklin to get a plunber or locksmith just to ring your doorbell.

I typed in my Mom's home address and found my F-250 in the driveway. Someone paid to have the photo taken, mated the photo to an address, and posted it on the 'net. So where is the payback to compensate for the investment?

salty

That's Google Map's Street View. They have hundreds (thousands? 10s of thousands? ) of vehicles with camera arrays (pic here) running around the world taking pictures.

jmorris wrote:

saltydog wrote:Information has value. But this 'information' is free. Who, and why did someone pay to have these photos taken?

It takes the better part of a Franklin to get a plunber or locksmith just to ring your doorbell.

I typed in my Mom's home address and found my F-250 in the driveway. Someone paid to have the photo taken, mated the photo to an address, and posted it on the 'net. So where is the payback to compensate for the investment?

salty

That's Google Map's Street View. They have hundreds (thousands? 10s of thousands? ) of vehicles with camera arrays (pic here) running around the world taking pictures.

Yup. They just drive around. The onboard computers use GPS to match pictures with a location, and it all gets uploaded to a huge database.

jmorris wrote:

saltydog wrote:Information has value. But this 'information' is free. Who, and why did someone pay to have these photos taken?

It takes the better part of a Franklin to get a plunber or locksmith just to ring your doorbell.

I typed in my Mom's home address and found my F-250 in the driveway. Someone paid to have the photo taken, mated the photo to an address, and posted it on the 'net. So where is the payback to compensate for the investment?

salty

That's Google Map's Street View. They have hundreds (thousands? 10s of thousands? ) of vehicles with camera arrays (pic here) running around the world taking pictures.

I get a kick out of seeing the pics that show the camera array in a reflection.

Some of their vehicles have run into problems with people who objected to the picture taking blocking vehicles, assaulting drivers, and such.

They are also supposed to be fuzzing out recognizable people, but that hasn't been 100%.

And then there are the obviously Paint Shopped pics of sensitive areas.

The permanent official home of the VP of the US is at
the US Naval Observatory, a few miles from the White House,
but still within DC.

IIRC, Dick Cheney had this property blurred out, or somehow
removed from Google Earth, while he lived there.

Lynn Cheney, by the way, is a good sport about her husband's
personality. She remarked that his being called Darth Vader
humanized him. :-)

SIA

Same question again...Why?...Where is the Payback? A reliable vehicle is worth about 300.00 per month, add wages for the driver of about 2,000.00 per month. That is for one vehicle. You get the idea. That represents a substantiol investment. Where is the return?

salty

saltydog wrote:Same question again...Why?...Where is the Payback? A reliable vehicle is worth about 300.00 per month, add wages for the driver of about 2,000.00 per month. That is for one vehicle. You get the idea. That represents a substantiol investment. Where is the return?

salty

The return? You go to google. Google also is scanning in everybook in the Library. Also they can sell their Google Map software which is used by ALOT of different companies (Police, Real Estate, ect)
Google has the money, and millons of millons of people go to their website.
Heck google.com has no advertising on its main page, thats almost unheard of, yet they are still the kings of the internet.

Yessir, and its free. You aren't charged to use the search engine, Maps, Reverse look-up, etc. Maybe sometime in the future we'll get a hit on a debit card every time we access these services. For now though, its free. So where is the return?

salty

saltydog wrote:Yessir, and its free. You aren't charged to use the search engine, Maps, Reverse look-up, etc. Maybe sometime in the future we'll get a hit on a debit card every time we access these services. For now though, its free. So where is the return?

salty

The return is companies pay them to advertise in their search results.

If you use google maps, and you find something, say a restaurant, click it, and you're taken to a page with information on that restaurant and.. ta-da... targeted ads!
There's also ads that appear at the bottom of the map, relevant to what you are searching.

Basically, it's all advertising.

saltydog wrote:Yessir, and its free. You aren't charged to use the search engine, Maps, Reverse look-up, etc. Maybe sometime in the future we'll get a hit on a debit card every time we access these services. For now though, its free. So where is the return?

They also sell professional versions of Google Earth, which you've probably seen on the news or in weather reports and didn't realize it. They charge big bucks for that.

You don't pay to do a Google search, do you? Google also provides free email, a free browser (Chrome), and free productivity online applications. Where's the business model? Answer: they have ads, but they're small and unobtrusive. They sell cumulative user data. And, they sell Google as a product. When they went public, the stock itself because a commodity, even if their physical holdings (office space and server farms) are a negligible portion of the total value.

How does this work out? Well, the founders at tied at #5 on the Forbes list of richest Americans, at $18.5 billion apiece.