"Old Guard" Meets "New Guard"?

There has been a flurry of reaction around the web of GIS-related bloggers about the joint appearance by ESRI's Jack Dangermond and Google's John Hanke at Where 2.0, the geo-web conference. The pair announced increased interconnectivity between ArcGIS and Google's Maps and Earth that should make sharing data with more folks on-line easier and more effective.

Sean Gorman, of FortiusOne, spoke just before Mr. Hanke and called it a pleasant surprise but added a note of caution:

Its great to see the big guys on the GeoWeb and GIS respectively working together to bring more data to the masses. While there was a nice canned demo showing ArcGIS 9.3 interacting with Google Earth, it will be interesting to see how it works in the wild and how it scales. My one concern is that is seemed from the demo that the model is still based around the public being passive viewers of GIS professionals work.

Adena Schutzberg, in her All Points Blog, has a detailed, plain-English review of the idea:

This is a huge step forward for geography (neo, paleo, and all the rest). It does indeed bring the hidden data and emerging Web services from the huge ESRI community out into the light of day.

Theron Hatch, at The GeoJobe Blog, builds on Adena's analysis with some thoughts about where we go next:

It seems that costs should come down for budget conscious agencies looking to maximize the ingestion of free data available throughout the Where 2.0 map world, while at the same time managing only those internal datasets that are either required by law, security-focused, or otherwise need to be handled locally. This leaves a plethora of free data that someone else can manage and make available. This news means combining these disparate datasets is now easier and more seamless than ever. “Why can’t we all just get along” just flew out the window.

Finally, Sue, posting yesterday on Very Spatial, suggested the "old meet new" idea:

...for those of us GIS old timers, it was kinda symbolic to see the old and new guard coming together.

Things are getting interesting. Yet again.