I watched Brian and company demo the new Google Maps stuff on Google.io video today and was very impressed. I’ll hopefully get my trial activated soon to check it out live. But it’s clearly a great step in the “personal maps” direction that Michael and i were dancing around.

The most impressive thing though is how well Google Earth has been integrated into the fabric of maps. This was our greatest hope, back when Keyhole was acquired.

It all comes full circle, I guess. Back in 2000, we wanted to build a ubiquitous 3D geo browser for an augmented world of connected content. In 2012, it’s the evolved browser that can host what had to be a standalone app or relatively unsafe ActiveX control back then.

The “augmented world” part is still to come, I figure, but one VP did let slip  that they truly understand the importance of Geo to Google and everyone — having a perfect digital copy of the world is necessary for all sorts of services one might build on top. So the value goes way beyond sightseeing and directions.

It’s also kind of humorous to note that the very first version of the globe I helped write had nice day/night shadow cycles, stars, the moon, dynamic clouds, and highly interactive labels. It was truly beautiful. But of that list, only the dynamic labels survived to launch, since someone high up in our company (who shall remain nameless) thought that the extra photo-realism took away from the “mappiness” and utility of the app. Again, it’s come full circle. Earth was and should always be about the beauty and awe inspiring power of the real world.