France to rival Google Earth

Last Friday French Geoportail has unveiled a new service that lets people download and study satellite images of the country. Although not nearly as global as the famous Google Earth, the new service gives French users much better resolution of the terrain.





It seems that Google will soon loose a part of its audience to local services that do not try to cover all the Earth but instead focus on their own country or an economic region. And the French Geoportail is just an early bird of the upcoming wave of such services.

As Reuters reports, "President Jacques Chirac stressed the need for France to have such a site, which will allow Internet users to view aerial photos and maps, saying the state had to be at the cutting edge of modern technology".

See also:

• Google Launches Free Video Search Services


• Stanford and Google to Make Library Books Available Online


• Google Search Now Embedded in Operating System With New 'Hot Words'

Source: press release





Permalink: France to rival Google Earth