Cnet reports that Keyhole Markup Language (KML) has been accepted as an open standard by the Open Geospatial Consortium. This is the language that Google Earth and Google Maps data is stored in, and can be used to describe anything from a point in 3D space, to polygons, to the shape, style, and color of the lines used to draw them. Although KML has already been used by a number of companies other than Google, this should help it gain even wider acceptance.

If you’re interested in what KML looks like and how to write or consume it, Google Code has some great KML documentation. The spec itself (at least, in the form that will go through the working committee for final approval) is here.