The result, a rant at our IT PRO blog:
Google's latest version of its Earth mapping tool adds a significant new feature; Sky. It's a great tool, you can scroll around the heavens, zooming in for detailed Hubble shots of the most beautiful astronomical objects, and all for free...Read more here.
That's great for us, but a terrible thing for all the small software houses and software developers who've invested their lives in developing planetarium software. Astronomical applications have been a profitable niche for a large number of companies, and sophisticated sky explorers have been developed over a number of years. Now, overnight, that market has been blown away.