Agreement Positions GeoEye to put Premium Satellite Imagery at Users’ Fingertips
Herndon, Va., Oct. 18, 2011 — GeoEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY), a leading provider of geospatial information and insight, announced it signed a multi-year enterprise agreement with Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) to license access to Google Earth Builder, Google’s cloud-based map publishing platform. GeoEye is making this investment as part of its strategy to increase online access to its high-resolution color imagery. GeoEye will be using Google Earth Builder to deliver a new set of imagery services that will make it easy for any Google Earth™ or Google Maps™ user to access imagery across GeoEye’s vast archive. GeoEye will position these new imagery services as an extension of its EyeQ™ online access portfolio.
Since 2008, GeoEye has worked with Google to publish millions of square kilometers of GeoEye-1 imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps. Google users have been able to take advantage of GeoEye’s high-resolution satellite imagery to gain unique insight into our world. GeoEye is investing in Google Earth Builder because it provides a simple way to address the needs of many government and commercial customers who want access to GeoEye’s broader archive and recent new collections. With over one billion downloads of Google Earth to date, this provides GeoEye a simple way to make its imagery accessible to a broader audience.
Tarun Bhatnagar, Google’s head of Enterprise Geo Americas, said, "We’re excited that GeoEye will be the first geospatial data provider to use Google Earth Builder. Google Earth Builder is designed to let organizations upload, process and store their geospatial data in Google’s cloud. Employees can use familiar tools, Google Maps and Google Earth, to easily and securely share and publish mapping data. Enterprise customers will benefit from the quick, cloud-based access to GeoEye’s high quality and most current satellite imagery."
Tony Frazier, GeoEye’s senior vice president of Marketing, said, "We are committed to investing in initiatives that put GeoEye’s high-resolution imagery into the hands of users as quickly as possible. This new offering will augment the imagery that we currently make available via Google Earth and Google Maps with premium access to our most recent collections and our broader archive that contains over 500 million square kilometers of imagery."
GeoEye is launching a new publicly available Google Earth Builder layer to highlight examples of the ways GeoEye imagery is making a difference in the lives of individuals around the world. Recently, GeoEye’s imagery, in partnership with the company’s Foundation, helped researchers in Mali determine spatial measurements between bodies of water and health centers in areas plagued by malaria. The insight gained from the maps developed via this initiative will be shared with public health officials in Mali to help combat the disease.
About GeoEye
GeoEye is a leading source of geospatial information and insight for decision makers and analysts who need a clear understanding of our changing world to protect lives, manage risk and optimize resources. Each day, organizations in defense and intelligence, public safety, critical infrastructure, energy and online media rely on GeoEye’s imagery, tools and expertise to support important missions around the globe. Widely recognized as a pioneer in high-resolution satellite imagery, GeoEye has evolved into a complete provider of geospatial intelligence solutions. GeoEye’s ability to collect, process and analyze massive amounts of geospatial data allows our customers to quickly see precise changes on the ground and anticipate where events may occur in the future. GeoEye is a public company listed on NASDAQ as GEOY and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia with more than 700 employees worldwide. Learn more at www.geoeye.com.
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