Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, debuted its shiny new tool at the COP 16 climate conference in Cancun today. It's a database that will help scientists and conservationists track and analyze changes in Earth's environment, and hopefully slow deforestation.
The satellite imagery tool, called Google Earth Engine, takes advantage of Google's large-scale "cloud" computing infrastructure to build a powerful database out of the thousands of satellite photographs from the past 25 years, many of which have never been analyzed. It will be available online for use by scientists, independent researchers and nations.
