Google Earth does not violate national security

Uses images in public domain only

PTI | January 11, 2011



Google Earth does not violate any national security as it uses images that are only in public domain, a top official of Google Inc said today.

"We use the images that are in the public domain and we do not use any secret images," Chief Technology Advocate of Google, Michael Jones, said at a public lecture during the two-day Technology Festival (Techfest-2011) at the Indian Institute of Technology here.

Jones, one of the key persons in the development of Google Earth and Maps said, "we do not have any satellite of our own. We use only the images which are available in each country and make them available for people around the globe."

He said Google was also into developing virtual planetary exploration sites to take a virtual tour on Moon, Mars and the galaxy.

Jones said although 1.4 billion people across the globe are online for the last 10 years, "we do not realise that use of huge connectivity involves only 22 per cent of world population."

"Therefore, organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful to the remaining 78 per cent also," he said.

Jones said in all 1,000,000,000 hits reaches google every day, there are 300,000,000 blogger readers, 183,000,000,000 emails/SMS/IMS are used daily.

They have power for connection, Jones said, adding, there are 800,000,000 google earth activation and 300,000 Android mobile activation daily.

 

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