Garett Rogers over at ZDNet has been poking about in Google’s soft underbelly as usual and has come up with yet another surprise: Google has landed on Mars.

Now, I know property prices are something awful these days, especially down in the Valley, so a Martian Googleplex makes sense. Imagine, no regulators to shave your profit margins and force you to do evil against your will. No nasty telcos insisting you can’t use their pipes for free. Idyllic, or what?

Seriously though, the estimable Rogers writes: “I started digging and you will never guess what I found — a Google Maps type application that lets you view Mars. This service is called ‘Google Mars’. Using this service, you can browse the Martian landscape the same way as using Google Maps.”

America’s freedom to use taxpayer-funded data certainly pays off in facilities like this. European countries, including Britain, charge firms for using Government-funded data, thus choking off this kind of enterprise.

Wake up and smell the Google latte.