When to Explore

History shows that all great explorers know timing is everything. Too soon, the weather will be bad. Too late, someone else will get their first.

ArcGIS Explorer seems no different. The ESRI pages have long said (and still do) that it will be available when ArcGIS 9.2 starts shipping or when it is released. Well there have been several accounts of people receiving shipments. It hasn't been included in the ArcServer shipments. ArcView 9.2 is even available in the ESRI store. Yet ArcGIS Explorer is still unavailable for download.

The last I heard was that it won't be available until after Thanksgiving. My non-informed wild guess is that it has nothing to do with the software itself. ESRI has probably cleaned it as much as possible of bugs and errors. The real problem most likely getting enough network capacity ready for the massive download of the software and then the massive use of data via ArcGIS Online.

You may recall that right after Google released Google Earth, Google had to stop downloads. Think about that - Google couldn't meet the download demand for Google Earth. My guess is that ESRI is holding off in order to build network capacity. Because they know that most GIS users will download ArcGIS Explorer in the first 48 hours after it is released. And if performance doesn't live up to Google Earth (as it exists now) even if it is due to a massive rush, then they will have a much harder time convincing people that AGX is better than GE.

So, lets hope that ArcGIS Explorer is just waiting for the right weather.