In October of 2004, Larry Page saved a dying startup and that became the base for Google Maps as we know it today.
Origin
In
the age of MapQuest, when all we had was squares with pictures at each
direction, an Australian startup, Where2, decided to make the map the
center of the display. Users would be able to move the map around and
see for themselves where they are. Seems straightforward now, but back
then, no one was buying it.
Where2 lost most
of their funding overnight when Sequoia Capital decided to pull out.
While doing that, they put Larry Page in contact with the founders of
Where2.
Where 2's technology began as a
desktop application called Expedition. It was designed to be downloaded,
but Larry was adamant. He said, “We like the web” and gave a deadline
to transition their app to the browser.
On a
whiteboard (shown below), the four engineers created their business
model and the modern idea of a Web application — where data was fetched
in the background rather than manually having to be refreshed.
While
Where2 was responsible for majority of the work, two other startups
called Zipdash and Keyhole were also acquired and moved out to Mountain
View to build a Google version of what they had all worked on.
Satellite Data
Keyhole
was the startup working on high-res satellite imagery. When they
prepared a though-out presentation to stagger how to acquire images and
data, starting with the big cities first, Sergey Brin is reported to
have said, “Why don’t we just do all of it”.
Classic Google.
Several million dollars later they set up infrastructure and deals with providers to get high speed access to that data.
Launch
February 7th, 2005, Google Maps was leaked a day
before it was officially launched. People were enamored by the
draggable maps and design. But after those initial 10 million views, it
went largely unused.
Slowly, Google released developer tools and the famed trick of “seeing your own house” garnered users.
A year after that in 2006, Google Maps was the largest map provider in the world.
Today, Maps is the most used app on smartphones and guides users for staggering 12 billion miles a year.
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