Google's keyhole mark-up language (KML) technology has been accepted as an open standard for describing geographical data, it has been revealed.Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) - a group of universities, firms and government agencies that aim to achieve a consensus to develop publically available interface specifications - have approved the language.
As a result, Google no longer owns KML and the OGC will take responsibility for maintaining and extending it.
KML is used to manage the geospatial information in Google Earth and enables users to engage in a range of activities, such as creating models of buildings and overlaying customised place names on generic maps.
As a result of its acceptance by the OGC, Google hopes KML will be used more broadly for map description.
Commenting on the language, Google said: "KML has become the HTML of geographic content, the dominant way to share user-created maps online. There are now tens of millions of KML files available online, hosted on more than 100,000 unique domain names."
It added that KML can no longer be described as Google Earth's file format because it has "transcended" the application in scope and has even "outgrown" Google itself.
Explaining the development, Michael Weiss-Malik, Google's KML product manager, stated that the passing on of the language to the OGC means that "everyone has confidence [Google] won't take advantage of the format or change it in a way that will harm anyone".
