Editors Note: Google Earth Enterprise (GEE) launched on GitHub on March 23, 2017. You can also get more information on the GEE project site created by our partners.





Posted by Avnish Bhatnagar, Senior Technical Solutions Engineer, Google Cloud
Editors Note: Google Earth Enterprise (GEE) launched on GitHub on March 23, 2017. You can also get more information on the GEE project site created by our partners.





Posted by Avnish Bhatnagar, Senior Technical Solutions Engineer, Google Cloud



We are excited to announce that we are open-sourcing Google Earth Enterprise (GEE), the enterprise product that allows developers to build and host their own private maps and 3D globes. With this release, GEE Fusion, GEE Server, and GEE Portable Server source code (all 470,000+ lines!) will be published on GitHub under the Apache2 license in March.


Screen Shot 2017-01-26 at 2.51.24 PM.png



Originally launched in 2006, Google Earth Enterprise provides customers the ability to build and host private, on-premise versions of Google Earth and Google Maps. In March 2015, we announced the deprecation of the product and the end of all sales. To provide ample time for customers to transition, we have provided a two year maintenance period ending on March 22, 2017. During this maintenance period, product updates have been regularly shipped and technical support has been available to licensed customers.



Feedback is important to us and we’ve heard from our customers that GEE remains in-use in mission-critical applications. Many customers have not transitioned to other technologies. Open-sourcing GEE allows our customer community to continue to improve and evolve the project in perpetuity. Note that the implementations for Google Earth Enterprise Client, Google Maps JavaScript® API V3 and Google Earth API will not be open sourced. The Enterprise Client will continue to be made available and updated. However, since GEE Fusion and GEE Server are being open-sourced, the imagery and terrain quadtree implementations used in these products will allow third-party developers to build viewers that can consume GEE Server Databases.



We’re thankful for the help of our GEE partners in preparing the codebase to be migrated to GitHub. It’s a lot of work and we cannot do it without them. It is our hope that their passion for GEE and GEE customers will serve to lead the project into its next chapter.



Looking forward, GEE customers can use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) instead of legacy on-premises enterprise servers to run their GEE instances. For many customers, GCP provides a scalable and affordable infrastructure as a service where they can securely run GEE. Other GEE customers will be able to continue to operate the software in disconnected environments. However, we believe that the advantages of incorporating even some of the workloads on GCP will become apparent (such as processing large imagery or terrain assets on GCP that can be downloaded and brought to internal networks, or standing up user-facing Portable Globe Factories).



Moreover, GCP is increasingly used as a source for geospatial data. Google’s Earth Engine has made available over a petabyte of raster datasets which are readily accessible and available to the public on Google Cloud Storage. Additionally, Google uses Cloud Storage to provide data to customers who purchase Google Imagery today. Having access to massive amounts of geospatial data, on the same platform as your flexible compute and storage, makes generating high quality Google Earth Enterprise Databases and Portables easier and faster than ever.



We will be sharing a series of white papers and other technical resources to make it as frictionless as possible to get open source GEE up and running on Google Cloud Platform. We are excited about the possibilities that open-sourcing enables, and we trust this is good news for our community. We will be sharing more information when we launch the code in March on GitHub. For general product information, visit the Google Earth Enterprise Help Center. Review the essential and advanced training for how to use Google Earth Enterprise, or learn more about the benefits of Google Cloud Platform.

Posted by Aditya Tendulkar, Product Manager, Google My Business



Today we are introducing business location insights in the Google My Business API to make it easier for third-party application developers and large multi-location brands to programmatically access location insights such as total number of searches, views and actions that let business owners track and analyze where and how people are finding them on Google.
Posted by Aditya Tendulkar, Product Manager, Google My Business



Today we are introducing business location insights in the Google My Business API to make it easier for third-party application developers and large multi-location brands to programmatically access location insights such as total number of searches, views and actions that let business owners track and analyze where and how people are finding them on Google.



Developers can now use the Google My Business API to request up to 18 months worth of data for each of their business locations and build applications that aggregate and visualize these insights in actionable ways. For example, a coffee shop with hundreds of locations can now easily compare and understand trends across their different locations such as number of user views, click requests for directions, phone calls, and more. They can use these insights to better allocate resources across locations and track how marketing activities affect their business.



This new API functionality brings the features from our Google My Business dashboard into your own data analysis tools. Web interface users might generate a chart of the last 90 days of Google My Business information:




Example data visible via the Google My Business web dashboard





Now the underlying data is available via the API. It's easy to get started with our new developer documentation. Here's a simple HTML request that provides a breakdown of how many searches a business listing is getting on Google Search and Google Maps:



REQUEST:

POST https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v3/123456/locations:reportInsights
{
  "locationNames": [
    “accounts/110714876951578713336/locations/14372810722634034850”,
  ],
  “basicRequest” : {
          "metricRequests": [
             {
               "metric": QUERIES_DIRECT,
             },
             {
               "metric": QUERIES_INDIRECT,
             }
          ],
          "timeRange": {
               "startTime": 2016-10-12T01:01:23.045123456Z,
               "endTime": 2017-01-10T23:59:59.045123456Z,
          },
    },
}



RESPONSE:

{
  "locationMetrics": [
    {
      "locationName": "accounts/110714876951578713336/locations/
                       14372810722634034850",
      "timeZone": "America/Los_Angeles",
      "metricValues": [
        {
          "metric": "QUERIES_DIRECT",
          "totalValue": {
            "metricOption": "AGGREGATED_TOTAL",
            "timeDimension": {
              "timeRange": {
                "startTime": "2016-10-12T04:00:00Z",
                "endTime": "2017-01-10T04:00:00Z"
              }
            },
            "value": "36738"
          }
        },
        {
          "metric": "QUERIES_INDIRECT",
          "totalValue": {
            "metricOption": "AGGREGATED_TOTAL",
            "timeDimension": {
              "timeRange": {
                "startTime": "2016-10-12T04:00:00Z",
                "endTime": "2017-01-10T04:00:00Z"
              }
            },
            "value": "81770"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}



Here is an example that captures insights on the places from where customers request driving directions to a business:



REQUEST:

POST https://mybusiness.googleapis.com/v3/123456/locations:reportInsights
{
     “locationNames": [
             “accounts/110714876951578713336/locations/14372810722634034850”,
       ],
      "drivingDirectionsRequest”: {
            "numDays": NINETY,
      },
}



RESPONSE (truncated to show first 3 results):

{
  "locationDrivingDirectionMetrics": [
    {
      "locationName": "accounts/110714876951578713336/locations/
                       14372810722634034850",
      "topDirectionSources": [
        {
          "dayCount": 90,
          "regionCounts": [
            {
              "latlng": {
                "latitude": 37.789,
                "longitude": -121.392
              },
              "label": "94105",
              "count": "2980",
            },
            {
              "latlng": {
                "latitude": 37.779,
                "longitude": -122.421
              },
              "label": "94102",
              "count": "887",
            },
            {
              "latlng": {
                "latitude": 37.773,
                "longitude": -122.410
              },
              "label": "94103",
              "count": "886",
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
          "timeZone": "America/Los_Angeles"
    }
  ]
}






Example data visible via the Google My Business web dashboard





With this new feature, Google My Business API users can optimize their listings to drive customer actions through understanding key insights about how customers are searching for their business on Google, and what actions they are taking once they find it. These insights are also available on Google My Business web and mobile, allowing users to keep track of key trends from anywhere.



To learn more about the Google My Business API and to apply for access, visit our developer page. Questions or feedback? Contact the API team on the Google My Business API Forum.