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At 10, Google Reaches For the Sky
Samir Makwana, Sep 09, 2008 0803 hrs ISTGoogle turned 10 on September 7th. We take a look back at Google's progress through the eyes of its satellite -- the GeoEye-1
September 6, Saturday. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Google has taken to the sky.
The GeoEye-1, a high-resolution satellite, was launched by GeoEye Inc. -- a company that provides satellite, aerial and geospatial information. GeoEye-1 will provide satellite imagery in the highest-resolution to the US government, to Google and to others.
The Delta-II rocket that carried GeoEye-1 was emblazoned with the Google logo; and the Google founding fathers -- Sergey Brin and Larry Page were also present at the launch of the satellite.
September 7th, Google is ten years old.
The GeoEye-1 is part of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency program called NextView through which the military organization aims to access commercial satellite images for supporting national security missions. Moving at a speed of 4.5 miles per second and at a distance of 681 kilometers from earth, the GeoEye-1 will capture panchromatic (black and white) images at 16-inches or 0.41 ground resolution and 1.65 meter color images. While GeoEye-1 is capable of imagery with details the size of 16 inches, note that Google will only have access to details of 20 inches.
GeoEye-1 launch site:
Google spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy said that in about three to four months greatly detailed, high quality and high-resolution imagery will be accessible to Google Earth and Google Maps users. Google will be GeoEye's only online-search mapping customer.
Google has been aiming for the sky since long. Earlier this June, Google signed a $146 million lease to build an R&D campus at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Google has always been looked upon as innovator and technology incubator.
Google's stairway to the heavens
Google has taken to the sky.
The GeoEye-1, a high-resolution satellite, was launched by GeoEye Inc. -- a company that provides satellite, aerial and geospatial information. GeoEye-1 will provide satellite imagery in the highest-resolution to the US government, to Google and to others.
The Delta-II rocket that carried GeoEye-1 was emblazoned with the Google logo; and the Google founding fathers -- Sergey Brin and Larry Page were also present at the launch of the satellite.
September 7th, Google is ten years old.
The GeoEye-1 is part of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency program called NextView through which the military organization aims to access commercial satellite images for supporting national security missions. Moving at a speed of 4.5 miles per second and at a distance of 681 kilometers from earth, the GeoEye-1 will capture panchromatic (black and white) images at 16-inches or 0.41 ground resolution and 1.65 meter color images. While GeoEye-1 is capable of imagery with details the size of 16 inches, note that Google will only have access to details of 20 inches.
GeoEye-1 launch site:
Google spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy said that in about three to four months greatly detailed, high quality and high-resolution imagery will be accessible to Google Earth and Google Maps users. Google will be GeoEye's only online-search mapping customer.
Google has been aiming for the sky since long. Earlier this June, Google signed a $146 million lease to build an R&D campus at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Google has always been looked upon as innovator and technology incubator.
Google's stairway to the heavens
Let's take a look at Google's 10-year growth period, starting from when Sergey and Larry met.
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995.
-In 1996, Page and Brin started working on BackRub search engine that analyzed website back links for relevance. First version of Google released on the Stanford University website.
- Google.com gets registered in 1997.
- During 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim invests $100,000 in Google; Google's received first investment. Google sets up a workplace in a garage in Silicon Valley and files for incorporation in California which gets granted on September 7, also celebrated as Google's Birthday.
- In 1999, Google gets $25 million of venture capital from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins and moves to Mountain View office with eight employees from the garage office.
- Google unveils AdWords, an online advertising service and Google Toolbar in year 2000. Yahoo picks Google as its default search provider. First ten different language versions of Google.com released. Google becomes the world's largest search engine.
- In the year 2001, Eric Schmidt becomes chairman and then chief executive officer while Larry Page and Sergey Brin get appointed as presidents of products and technology respectively. Google buys Deja.com's archive of 500 million discussions dating back to 1995 -- Usenet Discussion Service.
- During 2002, Google Labs, Google News with 4,000 sources, and Froogle is launched. AOL agrees to use Google's search Engine.
- In the year 2003, American Dialect Society members voted "google" as the most useful word of the year 2002. Blogger creator Pyra Labs is acquired.
- In the year 2004, Google went public with IPO at $85 per share. The email service called Gmail and Desktop Search application were launched. Picasa was acquired and the search index is boosted to access 6 billion items.
- During the year 2005, the controversial Street View debuts in five US cities. Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Base and Google Blog Search are launched. An RSS feed reader called Google Reader is announced and Google offers site analysis tool -- Google Analytics.
- In 2006, virally popular video-sharing website YouTube was acquired. Google launched Calendar, Gmail Mobile and Google Finance. Google Checkout is opened for business and Google's Page creator is available to limited users. Google goes live in China after some tug-of-war.
- Google acquired an online advertising agency DoubleClick and social mobile start-up Jaiku. Street View debuted in Google Maps which was available for five US cities in the year 2007. Google shuts down its video-sharing service Google Video and also gets sued by Viacom over YouTube clips.
- In 2008, Google launched their web browser Google Chrome to heat up the ever-going browser war between Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Earlier this year, Google's Street View service faced suits for infringement of privacy and started blurring images. Google entered into a legendary search deal with Yahoo and also promised IM interoperability. Wikipedia alternative Google Knol was launched.
To know more about Google's milestones in detail, visit their Milestones page.
Google's 10-year path to 2008 hasn't been without controversy. Do you think the company's "You can make money without doing evil" mantra still stands untainted? Here's a company that has, for better or worse, aligned itself as the means to surf the Internet, and to monetize the same. Is Google becoming too powerful, and will its power corrupt, as the old adage says it would? In an interview for Wired Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously stated that "Evil, is what Sergey says is evil." That diktat is frightening when you think on how a company as powerful as Google relies on just one person for a moral compass.
What are your thoughts on Google, now ten years old?
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