>From what I can tell what Google had was a truckload of "spare" cpu capacity and the insight to apply their <http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html> "MapReduce" technology to the slicing and dicing required to make the imagery usable - that was the breakthrough.
_____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of M J Sent: Wednesday, 2 July 2008 12:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Critical Theory Just a thought... On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Eric Wolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Google "solved" similar problems in Google Earth by taking a commonly known concept in cartography (globes are better than maps at representing the world) and throwing just the right amount of technology at it to create a platform that furthers their goals (world domination?!?). Google didn't actually solve that problem. It was Keyhole, a completely separate company who was at the right place at the right time when obtained by Google <http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html> . Keyhole had been peddling their wares since at least 2001 and imo lucky to survive. The company I worked for at the time (long dead) was interested in subscribing to their service (we were building 3D model of cities using photogrammetry, CAD, & GIS), but not enough to actually do it as it cost a fair amount of money to do at the time (for a start-up) and was a pretty intense program for the computers of the time too. I believe that Google by that point was powerful enough to carry it to the next level and continue development. Nif
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