Re:Google Kills Cloud Print
by cpeterso on Friday November 22, 2019 @12:59PM
(#21608107)
Google Maps was not an in-house project. Google assembled it by acquiring mapping companies Where 2 Technologies and Keyhole.
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Which is the reason why import and export files for Gmaps/Google Earth are called .kml [1]
I should have checked Wikipedia at least, who link to a 2005 CNET story on the Where 2 acquisition. - https://www.cnet.com/news/google-mapper-take-browsers-to-the...
It looks like a talent acquisition: the Where 2 codebase was a C++ app, nothing to do with the Ajax implementation they rolled out.
I'd be interested in learning more about this story.
Good news! :) Bill Kilday, a founder at Keyhole, wrote a book about Keyhole, Where 2, and Google Earth and Maps: "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality". It's not very technical, but it has a lot of interesting history about the products' development and internal Google politics.