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Google Earth Digs Deeper

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Jon Ann Steinmetz, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Oct. 18--Commercial real estate's largest data provider is working with Google to integrate its vast stores of building information with the Google Earth interactive satellite mapping service.

CoStar Group is in discussions with the Mountain View-based online search company as well as in preliminary talks with Yahoo, its CEO said.

"Google approached us some number of months ago wanting to work on some initiatives with us, and we have licensed some content to Google already," said Andrew Florance, chief executive officer of CoStar Group. He didn't disclose terms.

The deal would represent Google's first foray into the world of commercial real estate. Google wouldn't comment, but for a company whose mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," a partnership with Bethesda, Md.-based CoStar would make sense.

The company tracks more than 200 bits of data on commercial buildings in the 80 or so biggest markets in the United States and plans to expand to the top 200 markets. It also has operations in the United Kingdom. The combination of CoStar's data with Google Earth's technology, which allows users to zoom in and "fly" through cities and neighborhoods, makes for "mind-bending" possibilities, Florance said.

CoStar sends out teams in specially equipped vans to photograph buildings and use lasers to measure them and calculate their exact centers for mapping.

"There are numerous ways CoStar's data would be very attractive in numerous applications," said analyst John Neff, who covers CoStar for Chicago's William Blair & Co. "There are possibly applications to be developed around using a Google map and being able to drill down into specific information on a given building, not just see it on a map."

Florance outlined several possible uses.

In the commercial real estate industry, "they buy and sell buildings, they lease buildings, they appraise buildings," he said. "They could say 'show me which restaurants sold this year in San Jose,' " then click on the search results to see pictures, who the buyers and sellers were, and how much they sold for.

The hungry average consumer, meanwhile, could search on "Italian restaurants," get maps and directions, and then actually see what the restaurant looks like from street level, "not what the roof looks like and what the air conditioner looks like on top of it," he said.

CoStar's proprietary data doesn't come cheaply to its clients and presumably would be a premium feature on Google. One San Jose brokerage house pays $9,000 a month; larger corporations can pay up to $20,000 for information on commercial buildings that includes high-resolution photos of the exterior, lobby and loading docks, 360-degree photos of some sites, floor plans, marketing notes and sales data.

Tenant information includes details on who they are, what they do, how much they pay in rent, when their leases expire and all the phone numbers in buildings.

"We're building the capability of viewing our commercial real estate inventory inside of a Google Earth or inside of several different projects," he said.

Florance said financial details haven't been worked out with Google because their projects are still in the works, but he said CoStar gets "a small fee" for shopping center data it's providing Google now.

CoStar, founded in 1987, has about 1,100 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom. It reported revenue of $112.1 million in 2004.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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