In stark contrast to Microsoft's recent battle, here and here, to get Open Office XML sanctioned as an international standard, Google has quietly pulled off a standardization coup for its XML-based KML geographic information language with barely a whisper of dissent.

The Open Geospatial Consortium recently approved KML as an open standard for web-based mapping applications.

Google submitted KML to OGC just under a year ago. The language - which enables geographical information to be added to maps and satellite images - was originally developed as part of Google Earth. It has become an important component of mashups and has been widely adopted as a de-facto standard by other vendors including Microsoft and Yahoo!.

Hmm... de-facto standards. Now, that's the kind of thing that used to be said about things like Windows and Office, and their power to pull the industry behind them.

KML's progress to open standard status has not been without criticism, though. Google's dominance of the standardization work at OGC is a concern. The team comprised staff only from Google and Galdos Systems. And KML has some limitations which might make it unsuitable for some advanced applications.

Suddenly, Google's starting to look even more like Microsoft, which succeeded in railroading its OOXML specification amid allegations of bussing in supporters to ISO ratification meetings.

OGC represents around 350 organizations involved in online geographical information technology and services. Members range from academic institutions and universities to leading IT names such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!.

In a further move into mapping, this time computational, Google recently revealed it is experimenting with technology to explore what it calls the Deep Web - areas of web pages that would not normally be scanned by web crawler software. The technique, as described by Google, scours HTML forms for additional data.

We look forward to Google exploiting its position as the internet's dominant search engine to quietly confer official status on another de-facto standard.®

More comments…

Related stories

Has ISO already rejected anti-OOXML appeals? (11 July 2008)
UK Unix group vows to appeal OOXML ruling (19 June 2008)
BSI faces High Court challenge over OOXML U-turn (1 May 2008)
Office 2007 fails OXML test (22 April 2008)
Google (re-)branded world's greatest brand (22 April 2008)
Microsoft beta tests Office subscription software (21 April 2008)
Google pays for Affero ban (11 April 2008)
Google hippie code trip delayed again (1 April 2008)
Reality crashes Google hippie code fest (27 March 2008)
Google warns third parties on GData mashups (18 March 2008)
Pentagon rattles sabre at Google's Street View (7 March 2008)
Silverlight 2.0 data and web services explained (6 March 2008)
Microsoft! needs! Yahoo! developers! developers! developers! (1 February 2008)
Gurus answer MapReduce young turks (1 February 2008)
Database gurus slammed for Google post (24 January 2008)
Librarians challenge Web 2.0 youf-work myths (22 January 2008)
Google turns Irish town 3D (9 January 2008)
Code scavenging goes formal (30 November 2007)
Google adds terrain to Google Maps (28 November 2007)
Google opens Maps for editing (22 November 2007)
Get started with Silverlight (5 November 2007)
Considering Microsoft’s 'rift with the web' (23 October 2007)
Ballmer talks up software as a service (13 July 2007)
Microsoft demos mind-bending photo app (12 June 2007)
Microsoft launches no-code mashup tool (22 May 2007)
Microsoft flashes up Silverlight media challenge (30 April 2007)