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I went on a tour of the USGS in Palo Alto in 2012. They used to keep all the Bay Area Topo maps there. The curator of the museum had a burning hatred for Goog

I went on a tour of the USGS in Palo Alto in 2012. They used to keep all the Bay Area Topo maps there. The curator of the museum had a burning hatred for Google (which was basically across the street). He told us that Google is 100% to blame for the cancellation of the USGS topographic maps program. Their management told him "Google is capturing it all now, so we don't need to do it anymore". He hated them with a burning passion because he was told to turn over all of his maps to Google for digitization into Google Maps because they would be shutting down the paper archives that he was in charge of. He wasn't mad because his job was going away (they were going to reassign him anyway) -- he was mad because he felt that it wasn't right for Google to be in charge of archiving and controlling access to what was public information. He was also mad because Google's maps weren't nearly as good as his. I hope that guy is still around and happy to see that the topographic maps live on and are freely available now.

Borg3 3y ago
Geez. Thats sad indeed. Seems management does NOT give a shit about data distribution. Yeah, but all into google, and they will do with it whatever thet want, even shutting it down later. Stupid. I myself also have open hatetred for them. I run my own maps aggregation service (Leaflet FTW!) and Im aggregating service from google, openstreetmap, USGS/ESRI and some local tiles provider as well. I would be glad to get even more free sources (especially SAT images), but unfortunately cannot find anything decent.
wolverine876 3y ago
As professionals often vastly overestimate the knowledge and understanding of people outside their field, I think we underestimate the lack of sophistication of government in the then new domain of modern IT. The US military, for example, allowed private vendors to own the code and data on which warfare and lives depended, not to mention future integration and updates. The military has learned, and now requires government ownership (at least in many cases), and even open, modular systems to facilitate integration with other vendors.
mistrial9 3y ago
menlo park, parking lot in the back. The manager of the USGS maps group chatted for a minute, bitterly deriding the closure of his unit (in a giant empty room where the conversation was had). No mention of Google specifically, but also no mention of the facts about purely optical and print methods. Their production line was all pre-digital type?
deleted 3y ago
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Borg3 3y ago

Geez. Thats sad indeed. Seems management does NOT give a shit about data distribution. Yeah, but all into google, and they will do with it whatever thet want, even shutting it down later. Stupid. I myself also have open hatetred for them. I run my own maps aggregation service (Leaflet FTW!) and Im aggregating service from google, openstreetmap, USGS/ESRI and some local tiles provider as well. I would be glad to get even more free sources (especially SAT images), but unfortunately cannot find anything decent.

wolverine876 3y ago

As professionals often vastly overestimate the knowledge and understanding of people outside their field, I think we underestimate the lack of sophistication of government in the then new domain of modern IT. The US military, for example, allowed private vendors to own the code and data on which warfare and lives depended, not to mention future integration and updates. The military has learned, and now requires government ownership (at least in many cases), and even open, modular systems to facilitate integration with other vendors.

mistrial9 3y ago

menlo park, parking lot in the back. The manager of the USGS maps group chatted for a minute, bitterly deriding the closure of his unit (in a giant empty room where the conversation was had). No mention of Google specifically, but also no mention of the facts about purely optical and print methods. Their production line was all pre-digital type?

deleted 3y ago

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