GOOGLE Grabbing More Geo Data

At the recent Where 2.0 Conference Google announced that it would open its servers to geographic data belonging to anyone. This means that developers can now quickly build a location-based Web service without the need of establishing and hosting their own data server. The benefit to Google is that the location data will be integrated into Google's search index, making it searchable and, ultimately, capable of generating advertising revenue. MORE INFO

Those in the disaster/emergency management field need to use caution concerning privacy, data sensitivities and reliability when using capabilities like this.