> But it never took off in the way Google Earth later would, in 2001. This makes it sound like there's some big mystery here. Is it really surprising that a fr

> But it never took off in the way Google Earth later would, in 2001. This makes it sound like there's some big mystery here. Is it really surprising that a free tool you could download in the 2000s took off where a commercial CD-ROM product from the mid 90s did not? How many people in 1994 would even have machines that could support such a visualization?