Google announced that KML is now an international standard after going through an approval process with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) who now owns it and will maintain and extend it.
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/04/kml-new-standard-for-sharing-maps.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/kml-html-of-geographic-content.html |
This is interesting timing because it adds significance to the introduction of KML in Microsoft Live Maps last week:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/microsoft-live-maps-drinks-google-maps-milkshake/ |
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/members The list is pretty long, but it is not yet an ISO standard. |
It's only a matter of time before Yahoo and Ask do the same as M$. |
TOMHTML, I'm not sure what you're getting at, that's just a list of organizations that are members (Google is in that list). This wasn't about making KML an ISO standard, but an OGC-recognized open standard.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/857
"KML version 2.2 was brought into the OGC consensus process by a submission team led by Google and Galdos Systems Inc." |
Yes Niraj, I've understood, but a big organization such as a country needs international standards. If France wants to store or share the coordinates of all its embassies, they will not use KML. |
Well, it's not ISO but it is still an international standard, and Ars did a good job of describing the weight behind the OGC:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080414-googles-kml-map-markup-language-now-an-official-standard.html
And France has used their standards before:
http://ogcuser.opengeospatial.org/node/59 |