June 10, 2014 Google annouced its intention to buy Skybox Imaging (aka Skybox) for $500 million. I'm pretty sure I pointed you all to Skybox just a few days ago. Nah. I didn't own stock so you SEC boys can relax. Martha Stewart - I am not.
You Follow the Money
Sure, the lure of better and more up to date imagery for Google Maps sounds like a great reason to suck up the Mountain View, CA startup that make waves from day one.
Who wouldn't want do-it-yourself mini statelites that actually work and demonstrably provide valuable data after all?
Others Follow the Data
My opinion is the imagery generation is worth the weight, but the actual Big value in Skybox may be in the company's ability to generate data from the data. Let me be clear - I mean "useful" data from the imagery. This is a Big Data skill set play for Google. It should sort of give us pause to think that Google wants this technology in house.
I'll have a scoop of Hadoop with that pleae.