[Book Review] Google Method： past lives of Google Maps

Author:[America] Bill • Kilday is currently the vice president of marketing of Niantic Company. He used to be the marketing director of Keyhole, a digital map startup, and later served as the product marketing manager of Google Geography Department, responsible for the promotion of "Google Maps" and "Google Earth".

Publishing house:Citic publishing house

Publication time:June 2019

Titanium media note:According to the book "Google Methods", Yu Sheng, a self-media person, condensed "The Story of Google Maps" into a complete article with nearly 28,000 words. Please read it patiently.

Last year, I finished reading Bill Kilday’s "Never Lost Again" recalling Google Maps past lives, and found this book not inferior to all kinds of "lean entrepreneurship" textbooks, but also more fascinating.

Say it looks good, mainly because it is true.

On the one hand, in the long development history of Google Maps, we can see the process of germination, birth and shaping of various features that we are accustomed to now: one-click location search, multi-layer mixing, and pins representing locations. "I" is a small blue dot on the map … … I deeply know that these characteristics are not jumped out of the cracks in the stone, and innovation is usually a process of slow polishing and full of accidents.

On the other hand, this book makes no secret of the political struggle within the company. After the original small entrepreneurial team Keyhole was acquired by Google, Google Maps was launched and led the development of Google Maps for a long time.

However, how does the "self-contained" Keyhole face the complicated situation inside Google? How to get along with the team that made the map before? How to face the repeated efforts of others for control? These stories are all described directly in the book.

CITIC Publishing House published the Chinese version of Never Lost Again, Google Method. After getting the permission from CITIC Publishing House, I condensed the story of Google Maps into a complete article.

Nowadays, everyone is familiar with electronic maps, and it is even more indispensable if you travel around the world. However, if we want to trace the origin of Google Maps, it will probably surprise many people. It comes not from maps but from a technology –Clipmapping.

Clipmapping can be translated as "fragment mapping", which is a by-product of SGI (Specialized Graphic Inn Innovation). This technology can combine images with different resolutions to provide a "seamless" experience when users zoom. Nowadays, when we use electronic maps, the zoom operation looks so natural and intuitive, and the Clipmapping is behind it.

Traditionally, Clipmapping technology is mainly used in video games, and it is often used to render large maps in games. As for real-world maps, if you remember, traditionally they are set at several fixed scales, and maps and seamless zooming seem to be naturally insulated.

In 1999, Michael Jones, Chris and others of SGI spent a weekend developing the technology of applying Clipmapping to maps (they called it CTFLY, City-Fly), which allowed users to zoom maps of different scales freely. All the people who have seen this Demo are shocked. The original map can be so dazzling! Some people even thought of the popular movie Enemy of the Country at that time.

However, using Clipmapping to make maps is not just for the sake of being cool, but also for engineering consideration: with Clipmapping, users can see the part of the content they are interested in without downloading all the data, and truly realize "weak water for three thousand, only one scoop".

For a project involving massive data such as maps, this technology is no longer suitable. You know, it was 1999, and CTFLY with Clipmapping technology also needed a Dell computer worth $4,000 to run.

Maybe CTFLY is so good that everyone is attracted by the cool interface, but they forget to continue along the direction of "map". SGI also thinks that this technology is so advanced that it can make a lot of money when used to play games, so why do things like maps that don’t pay off? However, Michael and others still spend their spare time polishing CTFLY to make it better and better, and finally the board of directors issued a termination order: "It is really cool, but don’t do it again."

Unwilling Michael and others asked, can CTFLY be taken out to set up a new company, with its own investment, to support itself? The board of directors agreed. After the recommendation of headhunters, they found John Hanke. Both sides were satisfied with CTFLY and hoped to do something on the map, so Keyhole was established.

If you are a military fan, you have probably heard of the US military’s Keyhole reconnaissance satellite. By the end of 1990s, the fifth generation keyhole, model KH-11, had been able to monitor hot spots around the world, providing a resolution of 1.3 meters.

Therefore, John Hanke, the founder of Keyhole, decided to name his company Keyhole, but this is actually only a stopgap measure, because what John really wants is Earth.com. Earth.com, a domain name, was bought by an employee of IBM in 1992. He offered John $1 million, which was certainly unbearable for a startup company in 1999. Therefore, the name Keyhole was used until it was acquired by Google.

But because he couldn’t buy Earth.com, John had to name his product EarthViewer. However, naming is only the first step. More importantly, where is its market?

At that time, there were already monopoly digital map manufacturers on the market, that is, Esri (pronounced ez-ree). Esri was founded in the 1970s. By 2000, it had hundreds of thousands of clients, more than one million maps and revenue of 300 million dollars, making it a well-deserved giant.

In contrast, Keyhole’s Clipmapping technology only provides a better user experience, but it is not a magic weapon to compete with Esri. So what about Keyhole? After careful analysis, Keyhole found several shortcomings of Esri:

The first disadvantage is complexity. Esri is a typical industry software, and it must be operated by professionals who have obtained GIS degrees. Every time they meet new customers, they must be customized by experts.

The second disadvantage is that the data is not uniform. Users often have to import all kinds of data themselves and pray that these data can be read correctly and aligned with each other.

The third disadvantage is that the speed is very slow. If all the data is not loaded into the local hard disk in advance, the response of a large-scale map is very slow and almost unusable.

In view of this, although Keyhole is small, it still defines the strategy of competing with the "Big Mac" Esri: EarthView must be used by ordinary people, must provide complete and unified data, and must provide a smooth operating experience.

Clipmapping technology makes the operation interface more intuitive to ordinary people. At the same time, the rapid development of the Internet makes it possible to save massive data in the central node and read and calculate on demand at the client, thus ensuring data integrity and operation speed at the same time.

John’s vision is really admirable, and his vision is quite clear, that is, to provide map products that ordinary people can use, so he is not afraid of the limitations of objective conditions at all. According to his own statement: we are not developing for the current hardware, but developing in the direction of hardware development. In the future, the computing power of devices will become stronger and stronger, and more and more devices will provide GPS information (although he didn’t expect that mobile phones would also have GPS)… …　

Of course, John will also consider the reality objectively. It has long been suggested to him to adopt BS architecture instead of CS architecture, which is convenient for users to use. However, John did not adopt this suggestion considering the hardware processing ability and front-end technology at that time — — You know, even Firefox didn’t come out at that time, and IE still occupied the largest share of the browser market. More importantly, Ajax was not born, and it was six years later that it became popular.

The tragedy of "the ship was in trouble to turn around" was staged again. After the success of the EarthViewer launched for the pain point of Esri. After that, Esri also tried to make the same product, which provided the same cool effect, and once shocked the people in Keyhole. However, they quickly found that Esri’s products didn’t even have a networking cable or Wifi connection during the demonstration. In an instant, the guys in Keyhole were relieved: Esri’s interface was cool, but it was nothing more than new bottles of old wine.

In this way, Keyhole opened its market, and the first investment from Sony lasted until around 2002. John had to find new investors, and he thought of Nvidia.

At that time, Nvidia had defeated 3dfx (an ancient name) and became the overlord of graphics accelerator cards. The booming game industry put forward a strong demand for graphics accelerator cards. The market value of Nvidia was as high as 10 billion US dollars, and it had the strength to invest. More importantly, what John really wants to do is a full 3D map, and he needs the support of manufacturers like Nvidia.

Keyhole’s conditions are: Keyhole customizes the optimized version exclusively for Nvidia in exchange for Nvidia’s investment, and includes the EarthViewer client in the CD attached to Nvidia’s graphics card. But Nvidia’s team ignored this: compared with Nvidia, which has a big family business, Keyhole is too small to understand what scale is.

John didn’t give up. He managed to get in touch with Huang Renxun, the founder of Nvidia. In the end, Huang Renxun agreed to provide Keyhole with $500,000 to customize Nvidia’s exclusive version of EarthViewer NV. John agreed, because with this $500,000, the company can last another two or three months, and it only takes a few weeks to develop a special version.

During the talks between the two sides, Huang Renxun also mentioned whether EarthViewer had considered providing "real scenes" while displaying street-level maps. John didn’t think about it. "This is equivalent to collecting hundreds of thousands of miles of real-life pictures." He paused for a long time before saying, "It will take about 20 years to do this."

EarthViewer NV was very popular after it was released. People in Keyhole received messages from various users, typically "Oh, my God … Oh, my God … God … " . EarthViewer NV costs $79.95 per copy. According to the previous contract, Robertson, the owner of Airphoto USA, can get 20 dollars … …

In the early days of EarthViewer, important clients were real estate agents. Because of EarthView, they don’t have to run around to see all kinds of houses in person, just click on the software a few times and you can see where the house is and the surrounding environment. This demand exists, but it is still too small.

Since 2002, EarthViewer has begun to tap users in more industries. Its sales Dave Lorenzini belongs to the kind of people that startups like best: they wait until what they want to do, and the less they manage, the better the result.

Dave Lorenzini has opened up users from all walks of life and worked hard to reach many long-term contracts. However, Lorenzini spent a long time talking with CNN, but it didn’t achieve good results. At the beginning of 2003, the contract amount dropped sharply from $400,000 to $75,000, and the possibility of reaching it dropped from 90% to 50%.

At that time, Keyhole’s annual income was about $2 million, but it still could not cover the expenses, and Nvidia’s $500,000 had also been used up. An investment institution contacted by Keyhole at that time was In-Q-Tel, but the speed of this institution was also very slow and it was too late to decide. What people in Keyhole don’t know is that In-Q-Tel is the investment institution of CIA … …

On the morning of March 27th, 2003, CNN finally sent a contract to Keyhole, confirming that the price was $75,000. Although the amount is very low, John achieved a remarkable achievement: CNN agreed to display EarthView.com’s URL on the TV screen when using EarthViewer.

Anyone who has experienced that period of history knows that on March 20, 2003, the United States-led Coalition forces began to attack Iraq, and major TV stations also began to report a lot.

At first, people in Keyhole thought that CNN would only use EarthViewer to record some animations in advance as a supplement to the report. However, this time, CNN reporter Miles O’Brien had a whim. He no longer wanted to use pre-recorded animation, but planned to open the EarthViewer software in the studio, starting from the whole picture of the earth, and gradually positioned himself in Baghdad to "personally" the battlefield. So what TV viewers see is this picture:

"It’s 7:30 am GMT. We look at Baghdad through satellites hundreds of miles above the earth. These photos are more telling than manual reports. We use EarthViewer’s software to enlarge the ground and look at the results of bombing … …”

At this moment, EarthView.com’s text link … …

Probably programmers don’t like watching TV very much, so Keyhole people are still working as usual. However, that afternoon, the burst of traffic poured into EarthViewer’s website, which instantly destroyed all services. Fortunately, there was a group of independent servers dedicated to CNN, so CNN was not affected. Everyone was looking at each other when someone suddenly received a short message from a friend: Hey, man, I saw your company on CNN!

What’s even more amazing is that EarthViewer can continuously obtain the latest data because of purchasing the service of Digital Globe before, so during the live broadcast, guests can easily compare the historical pictures of Iraq and find the latest progress. In the history of live TV broadcast, in the history of war reporting, such a thing has never happened.

Even the military has been affected. From top to bottom, countless commanders in the US military are asking: What exactly is this thing used by CNN? Why can’t I use this damn thing? Even many American soldiers have subscribed to EarthViewer at their own expense, so that they can be more sure when performing their tasks.

It’s not hard to understand what happened later. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and other media followed up and reported EarthView. Keyhole became famous in an instant, and major news organizations signed contracts one after another, and the long-delayed investment in In-Q-Tel followed … …

By 2004, Keyhole was in contact with Menlo Ventures, a veteran investment institution in Silicon Valley. Just then, an interesting thing happened inside Google.

At that time, the executive layer of Google was holding a product review meeting together, and the theme of the meeting was Picasa, which had just been acquired. As usual, sergey brin opened his notebook and joined the meeting. The product manager of Picasa was giving a presentation. Suddenly, he found that Brin’s mind seemed to be completely absent from his presentation, so Eric Shmidt(CEO) suspended the meeting and asked Brin: Is there anything important that you want to let everyone know?

Brin connected the projector to his notebook, and it turned out that he was watching EarthViewer. Many people are meeting EarthViewer for the first time, but they are all attracted by this software, and hope that Brin can enter his address — — "Show me, show me" … … .

Brin stopped and said directly without even considering the business prospects, "We have to buy this company."

Google offered Keyhole $30 million. But this is not the crux of the problem. What John is most concerned about is that Google didn’t have a map business before. What can it do if it buys Keyhole? He is also worried about his dream of building a high-resolution 3D model for the whole planet. Is there any chance to realize it? So, Google organized another special meeting.

"What do you think about making 3D models for the whole planet?" John asked.

"We think this will be the core of Google," Larry Page replied. "There are too many kinds of information that can be organized around maps and geographic information." Eric Shmidt added: "I guarantee that Google will provide you with enough image data, more than all the images you have processed before."

The guarantee of the founder and CEO is not enough. In order to show enough sincerity to finalize the acquisition, Google, which had not completed the IPO at that time, even made an exception and showed John the financial data of the past three years. According to John, God, I never thought private companies could make so much money!

The next day, John made a difficult call to the people in Menlo Ventures: "We are not signing this contract, we have changed direction".

On the other hand, it is precisely because of John Hanke’s insistence that Google can’t "pick and choose" Keyhole’s team and take in all 29 people. However, everyone needs to attend the interview. The name "interview" is actually just to determine the level.

Bill Kilday, the author of Never Lost Again, also participated in the interview. He was interviewed by Bret Taylor, an old employee and product manager of Google. At the end of the interview, Bret asked him, "Do you want to be PM(Product Manager) or PMM(Product Marketing Manager) after entering Google?"　

Because he didn’t understand the difference between PM and PMM at all, Bill could only answer, "I did both before". Bret said, "Do both? I can’t decide whether I can wear two hats, but personally, I think it’s unlikely. Of course, you can try it. "

Bill didn’t think much at first, but John Hanke immediately became alert when he heard about it: "Beware of Bret. I know someone at the top who is interested in maps, and Bret is her favorite guy. I don’t want all of us to take the reporting line of Bret. "

John thinks that since there are others who want to get their hands on the map, Keyhole can’t expose all his family. Finally, John suggested that Bill should not take the technical line, but "hang a sheep’s head and sell dog meat", which is nominally PMM, not in the reporting system of the technical line, but actually still works as both PM and PMM.

In addition to the conversation that needs to be "carefully faced", Keyhole joined Google and had many fresh experiences that impressed them.

On the first day of joining Google, they can go to the company’s parts station and freely choose the IT equipment they want. If you want to access the office network at home, you can ask IT support staff to provide a special router, and Google will pay for employees’ home Internet access. In addition, the campus shuttle buses provided by Google have their own Wi-Fi— — Come to think of it, it was 2004.

After the Keyhole team joined, Google organized a meeting to let everyone speak freely, and Brin and Page also attended. However, this meeting is more like asking Brin and Page to ask questions like a barrage:

"A large proportion of your data has reached the meter resolution?"

"Where does the data source come from?"

"What’s with the satellite?"

"Are these satellites geostationary satellites?"

"How big is the photosensitive element?"

"How fast does the satellite fly?"

… …

Another question that Brin is concerned about is: "How much space would it take to save a photo of the whole earth’s surface with a resolution of meters?"　

Although people in Keyhole have been doing this work before, they have never thought about it. So, Michael Jones, the engineer in charge of storage, replied: It takes about 1PB. — — "I think you are wrong, it should be 5TB", Brin gave his answer. Then the two men began to entangle the number. Michael invited Brin to work out on the whiteboard outside, so they started to walk outside. At this time, Bill caught up and threw out his own questions.

"Revenue of $10 million or development of 10 million users, which goal do you prefer?"

"I don’t understand what you are saying."

"For the Keyhole team, after one year, do you want us to achieve 10 million US dollars in revenue or develop 10 million users?"

"I think you guys should consider much bigger problems than this."

With that, Brin and Page left.

A few months later, during the development of Google Maps, Keyhole people gave Brin and Page a product demonstration. Two people’s reaction is still the same, what they want is a much bigger goal:

"How can I get such data?"

"Too few? We have spent $3 million on maps. You know, Keyhole has only bought a total of $1 million in the past four years. "

"Is this all the data of Digital Globe?"

"How big is the entire map database?"

"You mean, the map data of the whole earth? You know, the Sahara Desert, uninhabited islands, the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica are all included, and those data are useless to us. "

"Why don’t you buy the whole database?"

As a result, the budget for purchasing maps increased from the previous $3 million to $80 million. "It seems that we really should consider much bigger problems," John said.

At that time, Keyhole team work was divided into two parts. Part of it is reserved land, that is, the previous EarthViewer, and the original sales and services should be preserved; Part of it is a new job, that is, developing Google Maps, a web-based and free map product.

According to Google’s requirements, after being acquired, Keyhole should add the logo of Powered by Google to EarthViewer. The common Google logo includes five letters O with different colors, but Bill wants to change the blue one to Earth to highlight the characteristics of Keyhole.

Usually, this is very easy, Keyhole’s own webmaster can do it, but in Google, even such a small modification must be nodded by one person, and this person is Marissa Mayer.

Today, everyone is familiar with Marissa Mayer, who is the famous "Sister Mei" who appeared repeatedly in later reports. However, the Keyhole team who just joined Google doesn’t know who Sister Mei is. It took a long time to find out that she is the 20th employee of Google and the first female engineer, who is in charge of all searches. "It can be said that she is the most powerful woman in this industry, and more than half of Google people report to her."

In order to make a small change to the Google logo, Bill sent several emails and made several phone calls in the past few weeks, but never got a response from Sister Mei. All the other links have been settled, but everyone said, "Without Mei Jie’s nod, we dare not confirm". Seeing that the online date was approaching day by day, Bill had to rush directly to Sister Mei’s office and ask for an answer in person. He did get the answer: any changes must be released at the weekly UI meeting hosted by Sister Mei, waiting for her confirmation.

Finally, it was the meeting’s turn. After waiting patiently for 45 minutes, Bill finally got a chance to introduce the changes he wanted to make for 1 minute. Mei Jie’s evaluation is only one sentence: "Well, this is quite interesting. You can do it with confidence."　

Sister Mei’s idea has always been simple: all searches are under my control, and maps are inseparable from searches, so they should also report to me. However, John has long been aware of this, so he is very alert.

Keyhole’s team also found that the previous thought that "Google has no map business" is actually wrong. Google has tried it on the map, but outsiders don’t know it.

Google has previously acquired a company called Where2 Tech, and the main developers are two Danish brothers: Jens Rasmussen and Lars Rasmussen. The two brothers have been working hard to start a business, but the financing is always not smooth.

After 2001, the. com bubble burst, and Where2 Tech was basically finished. Originally, they were in contact with Sequoia Capital, but after Yahoo updated the Yahoo map and connected the Yahoo Yellow Pages with the map, Sequoia retreated. However, Sequoia arranged for them to meet Larry Page of Google.

Page is very interested in this team, but he also puts forward requirements for them. Where2 products, like all map products at that time, are desktop clients. However, Page believes that the Web is the future direction, and maps should run in browsers and get background data through the Internet.

At that time, there was another team inside Google that was also studying this technology of "getting data without refreshing the page", that is Gmail. However, the Gmail team and the Where2 team don’t know each other, but in the end, their technical solutions are the same, that is, Ajax can be seen everywhere today.

At that time, Lars and Jens were already struggling on the verge of bankruptcy. Because of the visa problem, they had moved their office from the United States to Australia, and there were only four people left in the team. After talking to Page, they found that it was an irresistible choice to change the technical scheme and join Google. They worked day and night for three weeks, took out a Web map and got tickets to join Google.

Compared with Keyhole, the team of Where2 has accumulated in front-end technology, but they have never had their own map data. So after the merger, Keyhole’s team also needs to be divided into two ways, all the way to maintain Keyhole’s original business, all the way to merge with Google’s existing map team, import the data before Keyhole into Google, and make Google’s "own" map.

It seems that Google Maps is a brand-new product for both Keyhole and Where2 Tech, and it is related to their previous work. So, who got on whose boat? Who will lead the whole team?

Where2 Tech reported to Bret Taylor before, and Bret is Sister Mei’s favorite. Both Bret and Sister Mei have many ideas about the map business and are full of expectations for the future. However, no matter who leads the team, the main force of this team is Keyhole. Keyhole’s people are different from Google. Not all of them graduated from prestigious schools majoring in computer science, and not everyone is extremely smart, but Keyhole’s team fighting capacity cannot be ignored.

Finally, Google gave a plan: John’s title is "General Manager of Keyhole", the original Keyhole team still reports to John, and John reports to Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product strategy of Google. At the same time, Bret and Google’s original map team still report to Sister Mei. This may not be the best plan, but at least it is a clear plan, avoiding unnecessary entanglement.

The reporting relationship is clear, but the working relationship is not that simple. Google assigned a large office to Keyhole’s team in Building 41. The original 29 people in Keyhole, plus 4 people in Where2 Tech who were making maps before Google, worked together.

The previous four guys have adapted to their jobs, but now they have to get up and make room for 29 new guys. This feeling can be imagined. What’s more, no one knows or explains how everyone should work together and how to cooperate. The final game