John Bacus just updated the official blog post: http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-home-for-sketchup.html#comment-4758965155257379409
@unknownuser said:
Hi everyone,
Just catching up on this thread againโ it has grown since I last checked! Seems like the worries you guys are expressing fall into a couple common themes, which I'll address below. Ping the thread again if there's something else you'd particularly paid attention to that I missed, ask it again.
For the folks worried that we'll stop offering SketchUp for free, "The free version of SketchUp is an important part of our world as well, and that isnโt changing in the least."
For the folks worried that we'll only pay attention to the AEC industry, "If youโre one of the many, many people who use SketchUp for something elseโfrom education to woodworking, geo-modeling to movie-makingโrest assured that there will be a SketchUp for you, too."
If you're just worried because you don't like Trimble's website, don't judge a book by its cover
For the folks worried we'll change the name, "SketchUp" seems like a perfectly fine name to me.
For the folks who think this is our big chance to write a 64-bit, mutithreaded Linux client build, see previous answers on our user forums. The core technological principles haven't changed either.
john