Bejing, China — In an attempt to uproot global search engine leader Google, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) rolled out its official online mapping service, simply call “Map World,” designed to compete with Google Earth’s popular satellite mapping service, that could spell more trouble for Google’s services in the mainland, as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company continues to hold out on applying for a license to provide a similar service in the country, state media said on Friday.
The government-supported service “Map World” is free and allows users to search for two and three-dimensional images across the globe, the China Daily said. The technology and website construction for www.tianditu.cn and www.chinaonmap.cn are still “at a preliminary stage”, the report added.
“In the near future, Map World will flourish to be a famous Chinese brand for online map services with proven reliability,” Xu Deming, director of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, was quoted as saying.
The map, “features images of satellite remote sensing with a resolution of 500 meters but this is enhanced to 2.5 meters for the Chinese map and 0.6 meters for maps of more than 300 Chinese cities” and employs satellite imagery taken from 2006 to 2010, and took two years to build, according to an SBSM official quoted in the story.
“It took about two years to prepare the service with all the satellite images taken from 2006 to 2010,” Jiang Jie, director of the database department of the National Geomatics Center under the SBSM, told China Daily on Thursday.
But the technology and website construction are still at a preliminary stage. Service providers have more than 80 virtual machines to support the operation with the ability to handle 10 million requests daily, while Google Earth has thousands of virtual machines, Jiang said.
“Our map service is expected to update the geological data about twice a year, but Google Earth can update its information every couple of minutes, through satellites,” Jiang said.
The announcement of the official government mapping service, by the deputy director of the SBSM, who mentioned that, “All the mapping information has been permitted by the SBSM and related national security departments,” comes after China required private online mapping providers to apply for what is seemingly a strict license that comes with restrictions.
“Approximately 70 to 80” licenses have been given out so far since the new regulations were put into place, and as of last month, Google still had not apparently presented an application to offer Google Maps or Google Earth in China. With Google now severing search results on the Mainland from Hong Kong since earlier this year, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that the world’s most used online mapping service does not have a future in China.
Google and China have been at odds since last year, when a serious hacking attack originating from China prompted Google to ultimately withdraw its search service from the mainland. Moreover, its mapping service in China has also been left in limbo after the government introduced new rules in May requiring all firms providing Internet map and location services in the country to apply for approval from the bureau.
Furthermore, the new rules require foreign firms wanting to provide mapping and surveying services in China to set up joint ventures or partnerships with local firms and keep servers on the mainland. Last month, authorities granted licenses to 31 companies including Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia.
Google stated at the time that it was examining the new rules, which gives China the right to shut down providers that fail to qualify for a license.
Earlier, Google’s video-sharing site YouTube and photo service Picasa are both blocked in China, and its Google docs application is sometimes difficult to access. Searches originating in China are now directed to its search engine based in Hong Kong.
Google does not keep servers in mainland China.
Google’s awayness from the China market had been viewed as possibly a window for Baidu and others to gain a strong hold, but if the government pours a lot of resources into this project — and continues to make it freely available — it could conceivably at least slow down any private service from taking hold of the market as Google has in many parts of the world.
Marsha Wang, Google’s spokeswoman in China, was not immediately available for comment on Friday.