The Privacy of Your Own Backyard?

Want a satellite picture of your backyard? Starting Wednesday, you can get it from the Web--courtesy of a joint venture among Microsoft, Aerial Images, Compaq and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The USGS supplies some of the U.S. images. But for other areas of the planet and places such as Los Angeles that were never mapped by the USGS, you can turn to images taken by Russia as part of its Cold War effort to set targets for its nuclear-tipped missiles.

Aerial Images, representing the Russian Space Agency, and the USGS will sell--for an unspecified amount--high-resolution versions of the rather blurry images available on the Web site, at https://www.terraserver.microsoft.com.

The site, which includes a terabyte (1 trillion bytes) of information, will be hosted by Microsoft using a 40-foot-long, 8-ton machine that Microsoft researcher Jim Gray calls “the largest personal computer in the world.”

Microsoft’s goal, Gray says, is to show skeptics that PCs running the company’s Windows NT and SQL Server database software can capably handle quantities of information greater than the world’s largest companies need.

“The problem Microsoft has is the belief that it is impossible to manage much information using Windows NT,” says Rob Enderle, analyst with the Cambridge-based market research firm Giga Information Group. “[TerraServer] could be a publicity stunt, but if it works it could be an important demonstration that Microsoft is close to having that capability.”