Introduction
In today's world, it's hard to imagine being truly lost. With smartphones in our pockets and Google Maps at our fingertips, we always know exactly where we are and how to get where we're going. But this wasn't always the case. The story of how we got here is a fascinating tale of innovation, perseverance, and a little bit of luck.
"Never Lost Again" by Bill Kilday takes us on a journey through the creation and evolution of Google Maps and Google Earth. It's a story that begins with a small Silicon Valley start-up called Keyhole and ends with a technological revolution that has changed the way we interact with the world around us.
The Birth of Keyhole
Our story begins in the spring of 1999 when Bill Kilday received a call from his old college friend, John Hanke. John had something incredible to show Bill - a computer program that could zoom in from space to Bill's own rooftop. This was EarthViewer, the precursor to what would eventually become Google Earth.
Keyhole, the start-up behind EarthViewer, was a small team of experienced software engineers working out of a tiny office in Mountain View, California. Their dream was to create a program that could run on any computer in the world, allowing users to explore the Earth from the comfort of their own homes.
However, the technology of the time wasn't quite ready for such an ambitious project. Instead, Keyhole focused on data collection, using a combination of NASA's free satellite images and high-resolution photos captured by advanced imaging satellites and low-flying planes.
Surviving the Dot-Com Bubble
As Keyhole was getting off the ground, the tech industry was hit hard by the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001. Many internet and tech businesses folded as investors pulled their money from the stock market. To survive this tumultuous time, Keyhole had to pivot its strategy.
Instead of targeting individual consumers as initially planned, Keyhole began casting a wider net, appealing to diverse clients across various industries. They attended real estate trade shows, demonstrating how EarthViewer could revolutionize property searches. They also found government clients, such as San Bernardino County in California, which used EarthViewer to survey territory during forest fires.
One of the most dramatic uses of EarthViewer came from the Santa Clara district attorney's office. They used the program to help investigate Scott Peterson, a man suspected of murdering his pregnant wife. By combining GPS tracking data with EarthViewer, investigators were able to trace Peterson's movements in the weeks following his wife's disappearance, ultimately leading to his conviction.
This diversification strategy allowed Keyhole to weather the storm of the dot-com crash while many other tech companies disappeared.
The Iraq War: A Turning Point
In 2003, a seemingly unrelated event would transform Keyhole's fortunes - the US-led invasion of Iraq. As the world watched the conflict unfold, CNN signed a contract with Keyhole to use EarthViewer in its coverage of the war.
While the initial contract wasn't particularly lucrative, John Hanke, Keyhole's CEO, insisted on one crucial condition: CNN had to include Keyhole's URL each time they used EarthViewer on air. This decision would prove to be a game-changer.
On March 27, 2003, CNN began using EarthViewer in its coverage of the Iraq War. Reporter Miles O'Brien used the program to zoom around Baghdad, showing new satellite images of bomb damage throughout the city. As the segment aired, Keyhole's website was flooded with traffic from thousands of curious viewers.
The exposure on CNN catapulted Keyhole into the spotlight. Soon, the company was appearing in major newspapers and magazines, and demand for EarthViewer soared worldwide.
During this time, Keyhole also signed a contract with In-Q-Tel, a venture-capital fund run by the CIA. This $1.5 million deal, which involved developing a private version of EarthViewer for intelligence activities, was the most lucrative contract the start-up had signed to date. However, it was just a taste of what was to come.
Google Enters the Picture
In April 2004, John Hanke shared some shocking news with Bill Kilday: Google wanted to buy Keyhole. At the time, Google was about to go public with a valuation of $27 billion. The idea that this search engine giant would be interested in a small mapping company seemed puzzling at first.
The story goes that during a meeting about Google's photo-editing software, Picasa, co-founder Sergey Brin became distracted by Keyhole's EarthViewer on his laptop. When asked to share what he was looking at, Brin showed EarthViewer to the room, leaving the executives astonished. Without any attempt to justify it as a business strategy, Brin simply declared, "We should buy this company."
When John Hanke met with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, he asked how EarthViewer would fit into Google's business model. Page explained that EarthViewer could be core to Google's mission. Both Google's search engine and EarthViewer were ways of organizing data - the search engine linked people to relevant websites, while the mapping program would link them to everything in a particular location.
Page and Brin saw a future where this mapping technology would change everything, and they were right.
The Birth of Google Maps
After the acquisition, all 29 members of the Keyhole team were hired by Google and invited to the Googleplex, the company's impressive corporate headquarters. The contrast between their old Keyhole office and their new Google workplace was stark.
Google employees enjoyed perks like free shuttle buses, juice bars, onsite gyms, and even massage rooms. There were Techstops in every building where employees could get whatever electrical equipment they needed for free.
The Keyhole team's first assignment at Google was to engineer Google Maps. This project involved three separate teams:
The original Keyhole team, which turned the stitched-together aerial and satellite imagery into a browser viewer.
Danish brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen, whose start-up Where2Tech had also been acquired by Google. Along with programmer Bret Taylor, they created the "map view" using their "prerendering" method, which allowed the program to predict and quickly load parts of a map a user might want to see next.
Google employees Dan Egnor and Elizabeth Harmon, who developed the most current "point data" to ensure accurate and up-to-date locations for businesses and points of interest.
Through this collaborative effort, Google Maps was born.
The Google Maps Revolution
Google Maps officially launched in February 2005 to widespread acclaim. It was popular not just with individual users and the media, but also with web developers and the business community. Google's approach of making the technology free to use and easy to customize opened up a world of possibilities for innovation.
Web developers quickly began customizing Google Maps for their own purposes. Paul Rademacher, an animator at DreamWorks, created housingmaps.com, which displayed available rental properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other innovators designed versions of Google Maps that showed crime statistics, incidents of police brutality, logging operations, and bicycle accidents in various cities.
Beyond individual developers, entire commercial enterprises began to build their business models around Google Maps. Companies like Hotels.com, Yelp, Zillow, Strava, Lyft, and Uber - some of which would go on to become multibillion-dollar enterprises - built their entire businesses on the foundation of Google Maps.
Google Maps as a Force for Good
Google's mapping technology has proven to be more than just a commercial success - it has also been a powerful force for good in the world. Two events in 2005 highlighted this potential to Bill Kilday.
The first came in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The Google team quickly uploaded new aerial imagery of the flooded city to Google Maps and Google Earth, providing evacuees with up-to-date information about their city. More importantly, the Coast Guard used Google Earth to save hundreds of lives. When people trapped by floodwaters called 911, the Coast Guard would use Google Earth to convert street addresses into GPS coordinates, allowing rescue helicopters to locate and save the callers.
The second event occurred later that year when environmental campaigner Rebecca Moore demonstrated how she had used Google Earth to combat destructive logging operations in the Santa Cruz mountains. By creating vivid 3D presentations of the proposed logging project, Moore was able to convince her community to reject the plan and save acres of precious redwood trees. Google was so impressed by Moore's innovative use of their technology that they hired her to work on Google Earth outreach.
The Ongoing Impact of Google Maps
The story of Google Maps and Google Earth is a testament to the power of innovation and the unexpected ways technology can shape our world. What began as a small start-up's dream to map the Earth has evolved into a suite of tools that have revolutionized how we navigate, do business, respond to disasters, and even protect our environment.
Today, Google Maps is an integral part of our daily lives. We use it to find our way around unfamiliar cities, locate nearby restaurants, check traffic conditions, and plan our commutes. Businesses rely on it to reach customers and optimize their operations. Emergency responders use it to save lives. Researchers and activists use it to study and protect our planet.
The impact of Google Maps extends far beyond what its creators could have imagined. It has spawned entirely new industries and business models, changed the way we interact with our physical environment, and even altered our perception of the world around us.
As we look to the future, it's clear that the revolution sparked by Google Maps is far from over. With the advent of augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and other emerging technologies, the ways we use and interact with digital maps will continue to evolve and expand.
Final Thoughts
The story of Google Maps, as told in "Never Lost Again," is more than just a tale of technological innovation. It's a story of perseverance in the face of adversity, of seeing potential where others saw obstacles, and of the unexpected ways that technology can change the world.
From its humble beginnings as a small start-up struggling to survive the dot-com crash, to its pivotal role in shaping the digital landscape of the 21st century, the journey of Keyhole and Google Maps is a testament to the power of vision and innovation.
As we navigate our increasingly connected world, it's worth remembering the story behind the technology we often take for granted. Google Maps has not only changed how we find our way from point A to point B, but it has also opened up new ways of understanding and interacting with the world around us.
The next time you pull out your phone to check directions or explore a faraway place through Google Earth, take a moment to appreciate the incredible journey that made it all possible. And who knows? Perhaps the next world-changing innovation is just waiting to be discovered, hidden in the pixels of a digital map.