3pointD.com

Very Spatial yesterday flagged an interesting story on the BBC about Google’s mobile aspirations for the future. That, combined with talk coming out of Google’s Geo Developers Day that various people have reported to me, has finally convinced me that Google may at least be starting to think about some kind of multi-user version of Google Earth. If it comes, it won’t be soon, but it’s worth recapping possible developments (if that makes any sense), though a lot of this talk has been circulating for some time. Mozilla as well seems to be thinking about related ideas.

Google Earth execs at the Geo Dev Day were apparently quite excited about things like Second Life, and agreed that one of the coolest fantasy features for Google Earth would be to make it a multi-user environment, possibly one you could inhabit with some kind of avatar. This isn’t just substanceless speculation: Google has reportedly poached a number of former There.com developers, and is said to have had high-level meetings at this year’s Game Developers Conference with several makers of video game middleware.

The BBC story isn’t about virtual environments, but it does illustrate the fact that Google is looking more closely at how to integrate the real world with the Internet and Web in a more meaningful, more location-based way. In the story, Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, who is “in charge of the Google mobile mission,” talks about search that’s contextualized not based on what you’re searching for but based on where the search is being done:

For instance, he said, the first result that comes up after typing “film” into a PC browser is the Internet Movie Database. “But type ‘films’ into a mobile browser and you are most likely going to see a movie,” he told the BBC News website.

(The guys at Mozilla have also been thinking more closely about new ways to contextualize and refine search and browsing. You can hear them talk about that, in fact, on Amber MacArthur’s Inside the Net.)

The difference between search done on a desktop computer and search done on a mobile device is an important one, and something that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention up to now. I’d love to see a search app that was smarter in just that way, and which might sort my results differently based on whether I was searching the Web, the physical world, or a 3D virtual space. Already, Google Earth and Google Maps are helping people better navigate (in every sense of the word) the world around them. Google Maps Mania (which is also blogging the Dev Day) lists many examples of the mashups people have made. Getting directions, locating news stories, buying real estate, connecting with friends — the list goes on and on. I’d love to have some of this information in my hand as I’m traveling around the real world, and I’d also like to have the 3D online version of many things that can give me more of that information and can help me connect to people in new ways.

I’m pretty sure there’s a new class of 3pointD apps coming that will do just those kinds of things. What exactly they are hasn’t been determined yet (not everything needs to be in 3D, after all). I just like watching things develop. And knowing that Google is thinking along these lines, based on the evidence cited above, is very promising indeed.