[PROJ] Pitching the proj project to Google's Geo team

[Kristian Evers]

>From my view point, a major contribution Google could have to the FOSS4G
> world would be to put the Mercator projection to rest once and for all.
> They are largely responsible for reviving it, when it is now wholly
> outdated. Instead of triggering a new wave of innovation in geography, web
> mapping technologies pioneered by Google in fact propelled a regression of
> several centuries in global mapping.
>

I think hydrographic offices across the world would like to have a word
with

you on the relevance of the Mercator projection. But the abomination that is

the Webmercator shouldn't have made its entrance in the first place. We have

Google to thank for that but had they not been first movers with Google
Earth/Maps

someone else is likely to have made a similar thing. The actual
implementation

isn't particularly great from a geodetic stand-point but it does solve the
problem

of displaying a global map in a sensible way. The most recent incarnation of

Google Maps uses a globe when zooming out far enough and that technology

would be great to see shared with the rest of the community. PROJ can
certainly

play a role in that but I think OpenLayers and similar projects have a
larger role in

that.



I don't know if the broader community is aware of it but we do have a lot
of

contributions from Google already. Both in terms of actual code from Kurt
Schwehr

(possibly others, too) as well as the OSS-Fuzz testing facility. Of course
more is always

welcome :-)


/Kristian
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