Availability of Google Earth Imagery for Add Location feature

To follow up on a conversation I had yesterday with Robert Sandberg at Google. Robert confirmed that the imagery we were used to using prior to the SketchUp degradation of its Add Location facility on May 22, 2017 is still available for sale by Google. The dataset is apparently called by another name but it is available. Trimble would have to obtain it under Google’s Premium Plan rather than under its Free Plan and pay an annual subscription fee of $10,000 per year for the right to incorporate the data into SketchUp Pro since Trimble charges money for a pro plan. Trimble could still obtain the data a no charge from Google if it did not charge a fee to SketchUp users.

This is, of course, contrary toTrimble’s repeated assertions to this forum over the past week and a half, that the data is no longer available. Moreover, this morning I accessed Google’s imaging data through another product called PVSketch. PVSketch charges a fee for their product so I assume PV Sketch is paying a fee to Google for the right to incorporate Google’s data in the PVSketch product. A snip of the drawing I made this morning is attached to this post.I will continue to follow up on this issue. And I again urge Trimble to pay the relatively small fee it needs to pay Google to fix the problem with SketchUp that has so completely debilitated so many of its users.

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To follow up. The Google folks are going to make a sales call on the Trimble folks to see if we can get this mess sorted out.

My apologies to any who were offended by my overly strident tone.

Frank McIntyre

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Frank,

I’m the Director of Product Management for SketchUp and I am also the person who originally designed the “Add Location” feature while at Google. I negotiated our original data licensing agreement inside Google. I was involved in the negotiation of the five year license extension following Google’s divestiture of our group (just over five years ago) and also the most recent efforts at striking a new data licensing agreement with Google to extend or replace the previous agreement.

I am not at liberty to discuss the specific terms of any past or future licensing deals with Google in this forum. That just isn’t something we do in public.

You’ve made it abundantly clear to everyone in this forum (including many members of the core SketchUp development team) that you’re unsatisfied with the quality of imagery we have been able to license for your use in SketchUp. We’ve heard you and responded as best we can.

Your escalation of the issue to Google, however, is now undermining our ability to negotiate improved data access for everyone in the future.

As a consequence of that, I’ve asked that you be prevented from continuing to post here. I welcome the continuation of any conversation you’d like to have with our Support, Customer Service or Legal teams through their appropriate channels. I’m also open to continuing the conversation with you personally as long as you like.

Since we’re unable to find any evidence that you’re a paying SketchUp Pro customer, however, there isn’t much more I can offer you at this time.

john
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