Google mapping spec made industry standard

Members of industry group the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google’s KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.

KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company’s software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D co-ordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they have hiked or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.

Google hopes standardising KML will help mean broader use for the map description language, with rivals such as Microsoft already embracing it. Google already shares its KML format openly, and others have used it in software products, but the search giant now hopes that its status as an official Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard will decrease the number of barriers to further adoption.

Full article: ZDNet.co.uk