In reading Jack Dangermond's responses to the upcoming ESRI International User Conference's questions and answers, I ran across the following question: "Will ESRI support Javascript APIs for mashing up ArcGIS Server with other Web applications?" Here's tidbits from Jack's answer, emphasis mine:

• "Yes, at 9.3 it will be possible to expose ArcGIS Server services (i.e., mapping, geocoding, spatial analysis, etc.) as REST services for use in JavaScripting environments and for mashup style applications."
• "ArcGIS Server services can be mashed up with other mapping sites (e.g., Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc.)"
• They will provide three APIs:
• "An ArcGIS Server/ArcGIS Online JavaScript map control and API."
• "A Microsoft Virtual Earth map control and API with ESRI JavaScript add-ons."
• "The Google Maps JavaScript map control and API with the ESRI JavaScript add-ons."

This announcement is a biggie, and is very timely for my organization. We've been working a lot lately with the Virtual Earth API, and - depending on the implementation (and I'm sure we'll find out more about it at the User's Conference) - this could very well influence some decisions that we are looking to make shortly.

Actually, this falls right into a post that I'm currently working on, titled "GIS' Changing Paradigm". I'll have it up shortly.

Here's the link...