Planet.com: An up-to-date searchable database of Earth's surface

[David Baxter PhD]

The mission to create a searchable database of Earth's surface
by Will Marshall, TEDTalks
August 13, 2018

What if you could search the surface of the Earth the same way you search the internet? Will Marshall and his team at Planet.com use the world's largest fleet of satellites to image the entire Earth every day. Now they're moving on to a new project: using AI to index all the objects on the planet over time -- which could make ships, trees, houses and everything else on Earth searchable, the same way you search Google. He shares a vision for how this database can become a living record of the immense physical changes happening across the globe. "You can't fix what you can't see," Marshall says. "We want to give people the tools to see change and take action."

 

[David Baxter PhD]

The service is free (at least so far).

Sign up at Planet.com to create your 14-day Trial account.

This is the starting Explorer interface:



And this is what searching for Ottawa, Ontario, Canada look like, zoomed out to the max:

 

[David Baxter PhD]

This is annoying: When you sign up, there is nothing that says you will have to pay them in 14-days. Then you get an email saying, "Welcome to your Global 14-Day Trial".

I went back to the website to look for what the service costs at the end of the "14-Day Trial". There is no pricing information anywhere on their site. Instead, you are encouraged to contact sales. Uh, no. I don't want to talk to sales or listen to a sales pitch. I just want to know up front about your pricing structure. And to be blunt, for something like this, which I think is cute but certainly not something I need, if the price is more than "free for personal use", I don't want it