Sketchup development has been neglible since Google acquired the company years ago. Aside from adding a kludged presentation capability to the "Pro" version there hasn't been a significant improvement to the core product in years (and I suspect that the presentation capabilities were in process at acquisition).
Sadly, I can't see much synergy between GPS hardware and furniture design. I wish the acquirer was a CAD/design company. Hope we don't lose a great resource.
Does anyone have an estimate on the price/term of this deal?
Wikipedia has an interesting list of discontinued Google products. There might be some interesting product ideas that didn't work at Google scale, but might still be worthwhile for a smaller company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...
I bet they would have some interesting stories to tell, after going through a Google acquisition and now being sold by Googl
Trimble is sponsoring development of several projects in different research areas involving 3D perception, as part of the second PCL code sprint.
PCL is the Point Cloud Library from Willowgarage that also created ROS, PR2 and Turtlebot. These guys are surely trying to do some good stuff for 3D. Hope the sketchup community benefits from this acquisition
It's a good move for companies to shed products that aren't their core competency. Resources, and more importantly focus, are scarce and should only be used in activities which add the most value for the company.
I can see an established 3D CAD company really enhancing it as a potential bridge onto their bigger tools and providing more interoperability with other platforms. I can't justify buying a license of SolidWorks for my kid's PC but if SketchUp were a SW product with a ramp up to SW I would definitely consider it and even pay for it.
Time will tell.
It's hard to sell a $500 ruggadised GPS unit when it's built into someones iPhone, and people are beginning to wonder why they are paying quite so much even for RTK systems when the actual HW is so cheap.
But if even small scale housing construction started could be persuaded to use the same 3D mapping/GPS technology that big civil engineering projects do then you could tie up a nice market.
From the prospective concept design of the street of houses, the planning permission filings with 3D height modelling, sight lines, light rights, the cad drawings, then the automated layout of roads and foundations with GPS equipped machines - all with an integrated Trimble system.
I do agree that the technology has become much cheaper over the last 10 years, while Trimble's pricing has not fallen at the same rate.
