[Infowarrior] - Google Searches For Government Work

[Richard Forno]

Google Searches For Government Work
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022701
541_pf.html
By Sara Kehaulani Goo and Alec Klein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; D03

Google, meet Uncle Sam.

The search engine giant showed off its ambition yesterday to expand its
business with the federal government, kicking off a two-day sales meeting
that attracted nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed
military members eager to learn more about its technology offerings.

Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year
to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian
agencies and the intelligence community. Already, agencies use enhanced
versions of Google's 3-D mapping product, Google Earth, to display
information for the military on the ground in Iraq and to track airplanes
that fight forest fires across the country.

At the meeting, held over a breakfast of scrambled eggs at the Ritz-Carlton
in Tysons Corner and attended by existing and potential clients, Google
executives said they expected to see far more applications of the company's
technology by the government.

"We're really in the beginning stages," said Rob Painter, director of the
Google Earth federal effort. "Coming on the scene to the federal space, in
many ways, it's brand new."

Google started selling products to the U.S. government about three years
ago, company officials said. Its government sales and engineering team is
relatively small -- 10 people in Herndon-- but it expects to grow to 15 by
the month's end and to 20 by the year's end.

Google also has hired a team of Democratic and Republican policy staff
members who work in an office in the District.

Although most of Google's services are offered free for Web users, the
company sells enhanced versions of those services to its government clients.
The enhanced versions of Google Earth allow government agencies to merge
their data about a region with Google's satellite images and receive updated
versions of images.

The company aims to sell three key products to government agencies: enhanced
versions of Google Earth; search engines that can be used internally by
agencies; and a new suite of e-mail, document and spreadsheet products
similar to Microsoft Office but hosted on Google's servers.

Google declined to comment on which federal agencies it serves and would not
reveal its revenue from government work.

But publicly available data indicate that the nascent business quadrupled in
just one year, from $73,000 in 2005 to $312,000 in 2006, according to
FedSpending.org, a nonprofit unit of OMB Watch, an advocacy group that
tracks federal contracts.

Google said it has some contract work with many federal agencies, evenly
spread among military, intelligence and civilian offices.

"Most federal agencies have trouble with information technology. They don't
really talk about it very openly," said Stephen E. Arnold, a technology
analyst and the author of "The Google Legacy." "Google is in a unique
position to do these large-scale, back-office functions. . . . That's really
what they're up to."

For Google's mapping product, doing more business with the federal
government is like coming full circle. The technology behind Google Earth,
which Google says has 200 million users, got its start in the intelligence
community, in a CIA-backed firm called Keyhole. Google acquired Keyhole in
2004.

Yesterday, Google's partner, Lockheed Martin, demonstrated a Google Earth
product that it helped design for the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency's work in Iraq. These included displays of key regions of the country
and outlined Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, as well as U.S. and
Iraqi military bases in the city. Neither Lockheed nor Google would say how
the geospatial agency uses the data.