Recent developments
A decade ago, geospatial development was vastly more limited than it is today. Professional (and hugely expensive) geographical information systems were the norm for working with and visualizing geospatial data. Open-source tools, where they were available, were obscure and hard to use. What is more, everything ran on the desktop—the concept of working with geospatial data across the Internet was no more than a distant dream.
In 2005, Google released two products that completely changed the face of geospatial development: Google Maps and Google Earth made it possible for anyone with a web browser or desktop computer to view and work with geospatial data. Instead of requiring expert knowledge and years of practice, even a four-year-old ...
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