Both Microsoft and Oracle had subsequently released commercial products, but I had received nothing. Thats how they do business. I eventually approached Google because I figured they would release it free and take any currency or profit out of the product line.

All that said, I look at what Google released and my heart sinks. Its like looking at a bad puppet show. Do something nice for people and it appears off their map.

What was novel about the novel and great about Keyhole was the interface and the methods for actually handling all that real-world data, not the basic idea itself. Ideas are cheap. I pitched the original idea for Crazy Taxi to the guy who got Sega to build it. I don’t expect a penny for it, despite it being a billion dollar franchise, because it was simply my job (though the patent Sega took out does piss me off — not the lack of recognition, mind you, but claiming exclusivity for ideas that don’t “belong” to you or anyone and preventing others from “copying” you is wrong).

Anway, several people, perhaps just like you, have tried to implement a sphere of imagery with some “earth” data on it — some even in Java too. There’s nothing very special about that, I’m afraid. Texture-mapping a sphere isn’t the big deal. It would fail the obviousness test. What’s hard is making it work right — zooming and streaming high-resolution detail in real-time. Read my article on “How Goggle Earth Works” for some insight as to at least one set of hard problems that needs to be solved to do for real.

A link to my Java based system was posted onto a Java site called GameLan in 1999. The owners of this site went on to establish a new company and develop an identical system – which had the unique priviledge of sole access to the US spy satelllite photography library, couresy of the CIA.

In 2003, I approached Google to develop my system but received no response. It could just as easily have being called Yahoo Earth or AltaVista Earth. As to how I came up with the idea for developing the system is a lot more interesting than supposedly reading some novel. But nobody wants to read that story.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/1015/DONOTTOUCH074.html

Now, Avi… Imagine what they’re doing to every-other stock on the market. Actually, I’ve been and am a victim of people exploiting the Internet for their own corrupt gains. But, the SEC — the DoJ — do they care about the average investor — the average citizen?

It’s an interesting issue for me, considering since having become a victim.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog

The irony is, that these stock investment writers like to make you believe in something that they have very little — if any — knowledge about. It’s a world that’s laughable in many regards!

And in many ways — I wonder how people like that will survive in a metaverse reality someday. If they will, or if they’ll simply find a way to corrupt it with disinformation, just as they have through the Internet.