Some interesting news announced officially today from Google. On the stage at Where2.0 Google's Marissa Mayer revealed details of Google Earth Builder, enabling users to upload, process and store your geospatial data in the Google cloud.

Commercially available in Q3 2011 - The idea is via Google's cloud supporting all data formats, extracting all relevant metadata and presenting the user (think Gmaps and gEarth) with a nice catalog via the cloud. A demo showed a search for DRG returns a preview of the TIF file along with metadata and a thumbnail or the map. Earth Builder hopes to be catalog to manage your data and build maps - supports all standard geospatial data formats, including vector data. Think of it this way, using a standard Google account, the enterprise user can then serve and share up their geospatial data similar to the way that users currently use Google Docs.

This from the Google enterprise blog... No technical expertise or GIS training is required. The benefits of Earth Builder’s 100% web approach include:

• Anytime, Anywhere Access: view your maps from any computer or Internet-enabled device
• Speed & Scale: process your complex geospatial data quickly and efficiently; effortlessly scale to manage traffic spikes (for example, in cases of emergency)
• Lower Cost: significantly reduce IT costs and eliminate time spent buying, maintaining and patching software and servers
• Constant Innovation: just refresh the browser for the latest features
• Secure Storage & Recovery: no longer worry about storage limits and backups; data is backed up to multiple data centers for near-instant recovery