Could these new domains:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=311

be foreshadowing a feature similar to the new flicker/yahoo maps mashup (launched the same day these domains were registered)?

maybe its for the their photoblogging tool set ?? After all most Phones are inbuilt with GPS .. and this could give the vectors of lat/Long automatically ..which then renders the picture onto Maps / Gearth.

This has been done before, but only with certain s/w ciritcal to GPS technologies and this dataset (GPS) still needs to be shared by the carrier (telco) to google so that they can render it on maps..

Question : Why have manual tagging (aka yahoo tagging) , when you can empower users to directly post .. with vectors ?

Or may be it is related to the new acquisition they made "NevenVision"

BTW. Great find

if the speculations are true, Google will probably say its purpose is NOT for competing Yahoo! :P

oh yeah.. and great find indeed!!

"if speculations are true ?" –

huh ?? with google – all bets are off.. they never cease to amaze me!! :)-

>if the speculations are true, Google will probably say its purpose is NOT for competing Yahoo! :P

They probalby think MS is going to go that direction and want to compete with them.

Tony

Thanks..
and I agree that this product will definitely not compete with Yahoo... even if it is exatly the same service.

i agree with Inferno. it may be related to NevenVision and their ability to tag images with specific data (keywords, GPS long/lat, related images, etc) that will match a specific location or building or historical site which will return related data to the user via mobile phone.

NevenVision > i-Scout: Travel Guide
http://www.josuemedia.com/google/neven_presentation.php?screen=10