Two years later in 2006, real-time traffic updates, Google Street View, and the first Google Maps mobile app was introduced. Google Earth was also launched the same year, providing 3D views of the planet. With integrations from these additional acquisitions, Google first released Google Maps in February 2005. Along with this Google also acquired a geospatial data visualization company, Keyhole, a real-time traffic analysis company, ZipDash. In 2004, Google acquired a small Sydney-based company, Where 2 Technologies, and their idea for a web-based mapping software. The mapping platform that is Google Maps had relatively humble beginnings. Just how does this miraculous world-covering map work? How does it gather, organize, and make available this astounding amount of geographical data? To put it simply, it’s a combination of data collected and processed by satellites, government agencies, Google employees, and well, you. Google Maps came around, and paper maps have now become practically non-existent. And good luck trying to look at the stars at night and figure out where the hell north was supposed to be.īut then years ago, things changed.

Sometimes the road ahead might have been blocked for construction and you would have had to double back. Sometimes the motel marked on the map would have closed two years ago. There was a time, not too long ago, when looking at a map meant unfolding a large piece of paper and reading the tiny letting and trying to figure out where you were and how you could get to where you wanted to go.

Google satellite map