Le Monde interviews Google Earth's John Hanke
Le Monde interviews John Hanke, ex-Keyhole CEO and now general manager of Google Earth. Hanke speaks great French:-) Here is the translated version.
Highlights: Hanke credits the original idea for Google Earth to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. He also says they're working on refreshing the data for Google Earth approximately every 18 months. And when asked if Google Earth presents a security risk, he says that the authorities know the resolution of the maps is not sufficiently precise to contribute to a terrorist threat, and that the images are not in real time anyway.
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I didn't think that Snow Crash was the inspiration for the program, back when Keyhole demo'd it for the webcam company I was webmaster for a few years ago, I was extremely impressed by the demo and I started ranting about how it reminded me of the "Earth" program in Snow Crash. The devs who were demoing it for us (a genial group of Israeli fellows IIRC) had never read Snow Crash and had no idea what I was talking about, however they did really like the name "Earth".
Somehow I feel like I should have received a fat check or at least a "thank you" from Google or something ;-)
Posted by: Christopher Moore at 2:52 UTC, August 13, 2007
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