Microsoft invented it? I recall working on a digital mapping system in the late 80's that was very similar. We had a very large drum scanner that we used to scan paper maps and imagery at various scales. First we'd rectify the result, then we'd do a color reduction to both cut down the file size and to match the capabilities of the machines of the day. Next we'd slice the image up into 128x128 pixel tiles and assemble the result into a database of various scales that allowed a user to zoom, pan from map to map, overlay symbology, etc. At the time we were working with 300 MB drives, so we were very restricted and had to create specific databases that matched a user's need.
Important to note that there were a <i>lot</i> of mapping companies in the 90s/early 2000s, but the breakthroughs were really Google acquiring a number of mapping companies like Keyhole, where2. The big leap forward, of course, was the hyper responsive Ajax interface that google introduced around 2004.
I used this and it was incredibly slow. Clicking the arrow buttons moved the map by a fixed amount. In my opinion the breakthrough of Google Maps was the Javascript interface that let you slide around and zoom in and out, plus the engineering behind it that served the map tiles quickly.
This headline is pernicious clickbait. Why not say "Microsoft Invented a Google Earth precursor, but never took it seriously"? Because that would not force you to click through to understand how they "totally blew it."<p>Spoiler alert: They built TeraServer map service to demonstrate that their database product could handle a terabyte or more of data. They got tons of user interest, but didn't use the information they got from searches or the user emails to iterate on their project. They could have developed a dominant mapping service (the author's thesis, sort of), but they let the project languish.
"According to a USA Today article from June 22, 1998, the initial plan with Terraserver was to list every single transaction in the history of the New York Stock Exchange online and make it searchable. But that was only a half terabyte of data. Microsoft needed something larger."<p>I'd be curious to see what the size of that collection is now, post advent of high frequency trading.<p>Side note, the article in no way explains why Google Earth would be considered a success story. The lead engineer from this project went on to Bing Maps, it's not as if MS decided geographic data wasn't worth doing.
Heh, I remember TerraServer. It was pretty amazing to me at the time (late '90s), the first thing I did was find my grandparents' property and sure enough saw a few shadowy figures which might as well have been me with them and the dog given the date on the tile. When Google Maps (and maybe MapQuest too?) started doing maps <i>in color</i> I was a suitably impressed kid.
I almost feel bad for Microsoft. I think they were far ahead of their time in many ways, and ended up getting in trouble for it.<p>They had some pretty cool tablets, but unfortunately the hardware / internet infrastructure wasn't really there to support it. They were the first (major at least) to build an OS underpinned by a browser. They were early to the game of running a real OS on a phone.<p>Unfortunately they weren't really able to take advantage of those. They seem slow to get into the tablet game the 2nd time around, and even now they're still playing catch-up (although I've heard the Surface things are pretty good). Their phones are consistently underachieving for whatever reason. They're still struggling to find the right model for Windows ever since XP/7 (I think they've finally gotten on board with the Apple model of the OS is freely updatable, but I'm not 100% sure of that).<p>They've done some great work, but man, they can't seem to get out of their own way sometimes.
The TerraServer project split into two branches, read both Wikipedia pages: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer</a><p>Also NASA World Wind got popular, just before Google Earth, and was initially more advanced: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind</a>
I completely forgot about the response to aerial photography when it first came out. I remember having some concerns about the privacy implications and feeling 'exposed' on the internet that anyone could see my home. Funny how much my mindset has changed.
Except if you look at the screenshots, there's no information.<p>That's the key thing with google maps or google earth, it's the information around what you're looking at that is important, and google understood that.
I remember using this on my first 486, maybe a 386 on a CD that came bundled with Microsoft Encarta. This was just a hair before the internet started taking off on modems and such, I beleive we might have had an internet connection but it was still at the point where sharing floppy's and CD's were the best way to share software.
Fun Fact:<p>Microsoft had Instant IMAGE Search over 10 years ago when they launched the live.com product (if anyone remembers). Much much before google had instant web search. Start typing and images would instantly fill the screen. This was at a time when AJAX was getting popular. Like a lot of cool Microsoft tech, they didn't invest in it for the long run and just killed it along with EXPO, the craigslist competitor.
I am sure there were other things like this kicking around at the time as people have been discussing. I worked on improving the performance of the terraserver project a little bit. I was part of the team that designed and wrote sql server 7.0 (a db rewrite from scratch of the purchased sybase, including parser, optimizer, QE, storage engine, but keeping the stored procedure programming language that was from sybase). I believe this was 1998.<p>We all knew it was a pretty impressive combination of maps, jpeg image, software and web browsers. Microsoft definitely had an idea that they didn't want to make the web too great, because that could lessen the importance of windows. As others say, Microsoft didn't know what they had with ajax.<p>I remember this was one of the first, early, high query examples we had, other than tpcc and tpcd. There was a stored procedure call in the application that accidentally lead to basically a lock that was held, blocking everything else. That was a really hard problem to figure out.
I used terraserver to manually download the entire tile set for my town (right click, save as). Then I laboriously used Photoshop 5 to align and remove the watermarks. It took an entire week but by the end I had a clean ~150 MB jpg that I could scroll around in as needed.
We were writing web based GIS in 1996, using ESRI's MapObjects IMS. Tiling, projections, yes these were solved problems by then using available commercial software.<p>We were storing data in Oracle or DB/2 with ESRI's SDE sitting on top, because at that time no mainstream RDBMS had spatial types.<p>I don't recall if SDE supported SQL Server back then. That aside, you could have built TerraServer with COTS tech in 1997.<p>TerraServer was impressive due to being publically available. Nothing we built at the time was available to the public as far as I remember. But it existed.<p>And that's just web based stuff, which really is the easy part. Large scale GIS had been around for decades prior.
They're not the only ones apparently:<p><a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/origination-of-google-earth-focus-of-patent-infringement-lawsuit-by-artcom-innovationpool-246345841.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/origination-of-googl...</a>
They invented Google Earth, yes, but looking at satellite images is mostly a novelty unless you're searching for concentration camps in North Korea or nuclear plants in Israel.<p>Google Maps is a much more generally useful product. And Microsoft was well ahead of Google, they sold numerous offline mapping products.
How I wish MSFT executives were more competitive and less dismissive of non-OS related technologies back in the day. I am really glad that things are quite different today and they are -atleast- competing with other tech companies if not leading them.
AFAIK, Microsoft used public (US Government) imagery. Google bought Keyhole and that enabled them to own the sensors which gave them more power in terms of capturing content.
If you're interested in developing virtual globe applications, take a look at <a href="http://cesiumjs.org" rel="nofollow">http://cesiumjs.org</a>
I use Google Earth almost daily, and they've never made a penny off of me. It doesn't even have in-app ads. I guess these days "Totally Blew It" means "Wisely decided not to spend the next two decades hemorrhaging money on the thing."