4 ms·

Google datacenters most certainly have enough storage. I'd bet youtube uploads more data / day than these USPS cars would. Don't forget that the cameras on the

Google datacenters most certainly have enough storage. I'd bet youtube uploads more data / day than these USPS cars would. Don't forget that the cameras on the cars would not need to have 30 fps uploaded at 4k resolution.

jasode 9y ago
Here's my back-of-envelope calculation: Assumptions... 4,000,000 miles of roads (4.12 million minus 164,000)[1][2] 5280 ft per mile 200 ft as guess of distance between snapshots 60,000 bytes as estimate for 1 jpg sized for "near HD"[3] 15 photos per set [3] ... total is ~95 TB per day.[4] The Youtube stat from 2015 quoted 24 TB per day.[5] The total Google Maps in 2012 size was 20 PB.[6] So, 95 TB is within the realm of possiblity but it seems like coordinating the logistics in the USA to upload that much from trucks every day would be a huge hurdle. (The Youtube 24TB is worldwide uploads and not just USA.) Since the vast majority of the streetview images for a particular day won't be requested by anyone, it wouldn't be a good return-on-investment to pay for that much disk space. Obviously, the total goes up if I underestimated the intervals (100 ft instead of 200 ft) or underestimated the jpg size (new generation of HD cameras output 200000 bytes for still images). The total goes down if a significant chunk of those 4 million miles don't need streetviews. There are probably other factors I'm missing. (What's that famous Google interview question again? "How many gas stations are there in the USA?"[7]) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+i... [3] https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-of-camera-equipped-street-view-cars/ https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200)*(15*60000) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200... [5] https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-Youtube-Google-currently-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-You... [6] https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snapped-20-petabytes-of-street-photos/ https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snap... [7] https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+gas+stations https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+...
- dTal 9y ago
  95 TB a day would cost Google roughly a million dollars a year. For a company that routinely makes tens of billions, it's not a gigantic amount, and I'm not so sure they wouldn't make it back in extra views - "nearly live" Street View would be an incredible tool. But they wouldn't even have to save all the data for that - just keep it flowing. As to the logistics of data transfer - why not move the data physically? You're already carrying it around in all the mail trucks. Most of the logistics are already taken care of by the existing postal infrastructure. Just take the SD card out at the depo and put it on the next mail vehicle going towards Google. Or, to paraphrase Andy Tanenbaum, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a postal truck with a shoebox of microSD cards hurtling down the highway". *Fun fact - a shoebox full of 128 gigabyte microSDs has a capacity of nearly 9 petabytes!
- frankydp 9y ago
  Let consumers/business request the update on a geospatial grid square, and pay some amount that could in turn be profit shared with USPS. ie: a county could pay for its counties streets to save man hours for sqft appraisals, with just change detection, for the annual property appraisal updates.

jasode 9y ago

Here's my back-of-envelope calculation: Assumptions... 4,000,000 miles of roads (4.12 million minus 164,000)[1][2] 5280 ft per mile 200 ft as guess of distance between snapshots 60,000 bytes as estimate for 1 jpg sized for "near HD"[3] 15 photos per set [3] ... total is ~95 TB per day.[4] The Youtube stat from 2015 quoted 24 TB per day.[5] The total Google Maps in 2012 size was 20 PB.[6] So, 95 TB is within the realm of possiblity but it seems like coordinating the logistics in the USA to upload that much from trucks every day would be a huge hurdle. (The Youtube 24TB is worldwide uploads and not just USA.) Since the vast majority of the streetview images for a particular day won't be requested by anyone, it wouldn't be a good return-on-investment to pay for that much disk space. Obviously, the total goes up if I underestimated the intervals (100 ft instead of 200 ft) or underestimated the jpg size (new generation of HD cameras output 200000 bytes for still images). The total goes down if a significant chunk of those 4 million miles don't need streetviews. There are probably other factors I'm missing. (What's that famous Google interview question again? "How many gas stations are there in the USA?"[7]) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+i... [3] https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-of-camera-equipped-street-view-cars/ https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200)*(15*60000) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200... [5] https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-Youtube-Google-currently-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-You... [6] https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snapped-20-petabytes-of-street-photos/ https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snap... [7] https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+gas+stations https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+...

dTal 9y ago
95 TB a day would cost Google roughly a million dollars a year. For a company that routinely makes tens of billions, it's not a gigantic amount, and I'm not so sure they wouldn't make it back in extra views - "nearly live" Street View would be an incredible tool. But they wouldn't even have to save all the data for that - just keep it flowing. As to the logistics of data transfer - why not move the data physically? You're already carrying it around in all the mail trucks. Most of the logistics are already taken care of by the existing postal infrastructure. Just take the SD card out at the depo and put it on the next mail vehicle going towards Google. Or, to paraphrase Andy Tanenbaum, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a postal truck with a shoebox of microSD cards hurtling down the highway". *Fun fact - a shoebox full of 128 gigabyte microSDs has a capacity of nearly 9 petabytes!
frankydp 9y ago
Let consumers/business request the update on a geospatial grid square, and pay some amount that could in turn be profit shared with USPS. ie: a county could pay for its counties streets to save man hours for sqft appraisals, with just change detection, for the annual property appraisal updates.