Predicting Global Economic Trends
While Big Data firms often struggle to find applications for their hordes of information, Skybox moves from a data collection firm to a business packaging highly useful information. Using aerial imagery and video from a fleet of micro-satellites, Skybox applies computer algorithms to analyze, track, and predict global economic trends. The Wall Street Journal explains:
"In 2010, an analyst at UBS discovered that if he bought satellite images of parking lots of Wal-Mart stores, he could predict the company's sales figures before they were revealed in its quarterly earnings report, because cars in lots equal shoppers in stores.
"We're looking at Foxconn every week," Mr. Berkenstock [co-founder of Skybox] says, because measuring the density of trucks outside the Taiwanese company's manufacturing facilities tells Skybox when the next iPhone will be released.
"Skybox can determine how much oil is being pumped out of the ground in Saudi Arabia by imaging oil-storage tanks from above. The company can peg the likely price of grain months in advance by measuring the health of every square yard of cropland on Earth." -- Amid Stratospheric Valuations, Google Unearths a Deal With Skybox, Wall Street Journal, 6/15/2014
Google reported purchased Skybox for $500 million. This acquisition emphasizes the search giant's continued goal of revolutionizing the world's access to new sources of information.
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