Google has announced that they will be open-sourcing Google Earth Enterprise as of March 22nd. The product has been used by businesses to create custom map solutions like GIS systems, geographical analytics and more for years, but Google announced a transition to depreciation in 2015, along with a stop to sales. The decision to open-source Google Earth Enterprise does not apply to the client, the Maps Javascript API, and Google Earth API; only the bare Google Earth Enterprise data and APIs are being open-sourced, which means that users can build applications that utilize not only Google Earth Enterprise's data, but also its file formats, system calls, and more. Users are free to continue using Google Earth Enterprise after the depreciation, but they will no longer receive any official support.

Google Earth Enterprise will not only remain fully functional after the depreciation, but customers who continue to use it or who use products utilizing its APIs can look forward to full compatibility with the Google Cloud Platform out of the box. This means that IT departments can make the leap from onsite servers with little to no fuss, and reap all of the benefits of Google Cloud Platform, like backups, server management, and cold storage for archival resources. Google has promised that Google Cloud Platform will provide optimization and acceleration, as well, allowing for larger workloads and faster processing than most operations could manage with their onsite resources.

To make the transition a little less bitter, Google will be publishing a number of white papers with easy instructions to implement the new open-source variant of Google Earth Enterprise. Not only will Google explain how to transition data to the open-source version of the project, but they will also tell users how to fill in the gaps left behind by the elements of the program that aren't making the jump to open-source, and even how to build specifically for Google Cloud Platform to take maximum advantage of the available optimization and resources. Depreciation of the tool may mark the end of an era, but it's quite a bittersweet end, with all of the development possibilities and community support that making the project open-source will open up, even with some of the project's dependencies not following it into the open-source world.