Google had a weird way to let people know that a billion is a big achievement. The blog spared a few numbers for one to think about. It stated, “How large is one billion? One billion hours ago modern humans were living in the Stone Age. One billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing. If you traveled from Earth to the Moon three times, your journey would measure one billion meters.”
Not many know that Google Earth did not roll out from the search engine giant’s warehouse, but it was a service known as Keyhole when it was acquired by Google in 2004. Since then it seems to have grown at a rapid pace. Google had however worked on adding a number of features to relaunch the feature in 2005 and to name it Google Earth. Even though the service came at a price for Google, it offered this program for free and continues to make it available for its users for free. Google acquired it from Keyhole Inc., who had started the said project in 2001.
Google Earth and Maps vice president of engineering, Brian McClendon, had a post written on Google’s LatLong blog which read as, “We’re proud of our one billion milestone, but we’re even more amazed at the way people have used Google Earth to explore the world.”
A special video for the program was made, which can be viewed below:
{iframe width=”560″ height=”315″}http://www.youtube.com/embed/zsNncKEIWuw{/iframe}
It has accounted for a number of success stories, of which one was of Arcade Fire. It was noted by the company that Google Earth was used successfully by them for their HTML5 music video for We Used To Wait. They said that it was a convenient option for many as one could add their address and it would be rendered in to the video as the song played. There were many other detailed usages, which users have posted. Google on its part made it a point to dedicate a separate site to display them, with the tag “One world. Many stories.” McClendon even noted that the new dedicated website would note the user experience with Google Earth as it would help them “to follow their dreams, discover new and distant places, or make the world a better place.”
Google Earth even has had their share of controversies as a number of countries have blocked it, stating that it could pose as a threat to the country and could be barred on basis of national security. The main claim was that terrorists would be able to see details of their potential targets.
However, the program has still seen great success as it touched the billion mark.