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

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.