Today Google announced that they are giving the KML file format, originally developed by startup Keyhole who Google acquired, for geophysical data (maps) to the Open Geospatial Consortium.
I am curious to hear how different businesses intend to take advantage of this open standard – it seems like there must be a business opportunity here for services *other than Google maps* to do great things for consumers with user-generated mapping, especially now that the format will be so much more portable from one place to another. For example, a user of Gmaps could create a map there and then upload it somewhere else. Combine this with services that track where you are via GPS and there becomes an event more compelling story for what users might want to do with their location data as a timeline for their lives.
What would you do with the new KML standard if you could start a business today?