Also talk about Google map API

Last week, I came back and found that all kinds of messages about Google map APIs have been overwhelming, causing a huge earthquake in the GIS field.
Among them, the two articles of the friend Mars will be brilliant and representative, and will benefit a lot after reading.
Opened by Google map API
Google map API
However, it was also noted that there were not a few people holding different opinions, and the arguments between the two sides were sharp and abnormal. Therefore, as a practitioner who has been engaged in the GIS industry for seven or eight years, he also wants to talk about his own views.
First of all, I agree that "the application of space-based data should be a vast world". According to industry insiders, more than 80% of all kinds of information in daily society are involved, these are related to spatial locations, which are potential markets for GIS applications. The problem is that traditional GIS applications have not opened this huge market. Currently, mainstream applications in the GIS industry have just been developed for enterprise-level users, and most of their applications are concentrated in the space analysis phase of relative majors, the exposure of Google map APIs has exposed the iceberg and social-level public information services.
"For companies engaged in the GIS industry, the future will not be better because of something like Google map API, but rather severe, I would rather think of it as an opportunity for the GIS industry to soar. It is true that due to the involvement of large companies such as Microsoft and Google, the threshold for GIS application development will suddenly fall to a very high level, and more software companies can participate in the competition; however, the GIS industry has finally had the opportunity to go to the front-end from behind the scenes, which has received the attention of the whole society. Traditional GIS companies may lose market share, what we can get is a bigger cake.
As for the future development of the GIS industry, social-level public information services are the focus of large companies and the hot spot. Therefore, there will be a breakthrough development in the near future, however, it will never weaken the traditional GIS application fields. On the contrary, it will be more extensive and powerful because of its combination with social applications.
In addition, "the GIS industry lags behind the IT industry in terms of technology and concept" is not a mistake of GIS companies. It should be related to the application characteristics of the GIS industry. Vendors such as ESRI have become the dominant GIS industry before M $ stands firm in the server field. systems such as ArcInfo 7.0 are also command-line user interfaces that span windows, UNIX, for Solaris and other operating systems, as for the current COM-based or even DOTNET-based structure, it is only after Ms dominates desktop applications.