3 ms·

They took a chance on mapping and photographing damn near every road on the planet. They had a huge number of business/restaurant locations marked on the map wh

They took a chance on mapping and photographing damn near every road on the planet. They had a huge number of business/restaurant locations marked on the map which you could search for. They were the first to have great turn by turn directions that rerouted if you make a wrong turn (this existed but the user experience sucked and they had to be manually updated when roads changed). They created Google Earth which was _mindblowing_ at the time. They didn't invent it but they advanced it so much farther and faster that they might as well have.

jazzyjackson 3y ago
I'll grant you those points, I was 13 or 14 when all this was happening so I wasn't aware of the finer points. Now that I think of it I remember all the trouble they went through to send physical mail to business addresses to allow the owners to update their own data. That was smart. I wasn't sure of the details of acquisition vs invention so I went to Google Earth's wiki and found a pretty interesting timeline. iirc Google News was invented right after 9/11 because the news sites themselves were falling over from increased traffic, and Google Earth has its ties to the war as well: >> During the [2003 Iraq] invasion, It was used extensively by Miles O'Brien and other on-air broadcasters, allowing CNN and millions of viewers to follow the progress of the war in a way that had never been seen before. Public interest in the software exploded and Keyhole servers were not able to keep up with demand. Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion. >> In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole as part of a strategy to better serve its users.

3 ms·

They took a chance on mapping and photographing damn near every road on the planet. They had a huge number of business/restaurant locations marked on the map wh

by SteveNuts 3y ago

jazzyjackson 3y ago
I'll grant you those points, I was 13 or 14 when all this was happening so I wasn't aware of the finer points. Now that I think of it I remember all the trouble they went through to send physical mail to business addresses to allow the owners to update their own data. That was smart. I wasn't sure of the details of acquisition vs invention so I went to Google Earth's wiki and found a pretty interesting timeline. iirc Google News was invented right after 9/11 because the news sites themselves were falling over from increased traffic, and Google Earth has its ties to the war as well: >> During the [2003 Iraq] invasion, It was used extensively by Miles O'Brien and other on-air broadcasters, allowing CNN and millions of viewers to follow the progress of the war in a way that had never been seen before. Public interest in the software exploded and Keyhole servers were not able to keep up with demand. Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion. >> In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole as part of a strategy to better serve its users.