Joe: Every month, over a billion people use Google Maps. But the entire project, the technology that powers Uber and tells you where to turn, was almost killed off. It was saved, in part, by the CIA and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The story is wild. Lewis: Hold on, the CIA? I thought it was just some smart guys in a garage at Google. The app on my phone that helps me find the nearest taco place has its roots in national intelligence and a war? That sounds like a movie plot. Joe: It really does. And it’s the story we’re diving into today from the book Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Changed Everything by Bill Kilday. Lewis: Bill Kilday. I'm guessing he was one of the genius engineers behind it all? Joe: That's the best part. What makes this story so compelling is that Kilday wasn't some high-level engineer; he was the marketing director. And he openly admits he has a terrible sense of direction, which is just the perfect, ironic lens for this story. He was one of the last people who should have been working on a map. Lewis: Oh, I love that. The guy in charge of selling the map is the one who needs it most. It’s like a chef who can’t cook. Joe: Exactly. And to understand the revolution, you have to remember the dark ages before it. Kilday starts the book by describing getting lost in Boston in the early 2000s. No GPS, no blue dot on a screen. Just a paper map, a rising sense of panic, and his wife calling, wondering where he is. It was a universal, frustrating human experience. Lewis: I feel a phantom anxiety just thinking about it. Printing out MapQuest directions… the horror. So this book is about the moment we collectively stopped being lost? Joe: It’s about the messy, improbable, and frankly, unbelievable journey to get there. It starts not at Google, but with a tiny, cash-strapped startup called Keyhole.

Lewis: Okay, so what was the big idea? What did this little startup, Keyhole, actually create that was so revolutionary? Joe: Picture this: it’s 1999. The internet is still a place of screeching modems and clunky websites. The founder of Keyhole, a guy named John Hanke, shows up at Bill Kilday’s house with a software engineer and a massive Dell server. They plug it in, and on the screen, you see the Earth, floating in space like a marble. Lewis: Cool. Like a screensaver. Joe: That's what you'd think. But then Hanke types in Kilday’s address. And the screen starts to zoom. Not just to a country, or a state, or a city. It zooms past continents, over mountains, and settles on a satellite image of Kilday’s own neighborhood, his own street, his own house. You could see the car in his driveway. Lewis: Whoa. In 1999? That would have felt like black magic. I can see why they called it the "Superman demo." You're literally flying. Joe: It was pure magic. But then Kilday’s fiancée, Shelley, asks the billion-dollar question. She looks at this incredible technology and says, "But what do you do with it?" Lewis: Exactly what I was thinking! It's an incredible party trick, but how do you turn that into a business? Who pays for that? Joe: That was the problem. They had this world-changing technology, but no business model. And their timing was terrible. The dot-com bubble was bursting. Investors who were throwing money at anything with a ".com" were now demanding actual revenue, which Keyhole didn't have. They were constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Lewis: So they're sitting on this goldmine, but they can't afford to dig it out. Joe: It was worse than that. The pressure was immense. The book tells this absolutely gut-wrenching story about John Hanke, the CEO. The company was about to run out of money, again, and he was in Japan trying to close a crucial funding deal with a video game developer. While he's there, he gets a call that his father is gravely ill back in Texas. Lewis: Oh no. Joe: He rushes back, but his father passes away. And at the reception after the funeral, with his family and friends mourning, his phone rings. It’s the Japanese company, ready to finalize the deal. So Hanke has to step outside, away from his grieving family, and negotiate the terms that will keep his company alive for another few months. Lewis: Wow. That's… that's a level of commitment that's hard to even imagine. To have to compartmentalize that kind of personal grief for your company's survival. That’s the kind of human drama you don't hear about in tech success stories. Joe: It's brutal. And it shows just how close they were to failing. They were running on fumes. What saved them wasn't a brilliant business plan, but a geopolitical event. The 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lewis: How does that connect? Joe: CNN got ahold of their software. Suddenly, instead of showing static maps, news anchors like Wolf Blitzer were using Keyhole live on air, flying over Baghdad, showing viewers the terrain where events were unfolding. It was revolutionary for news coverage. Lewis: I remember seeing that! I never knew what it was, but it looked like something from a spy movie. Joe: And here's the genius marketing move from Bill Kilday's team: they got CNN to agree to put the Keyhole.com URL on the screen every time they used it. Their servers crashed almost immediately from the traffic. Everyone, from the public to government agencies, was asking the same question: "What is this technology, and how do I get it?" And one of the entities asking that question was Google.

Lewis: Okay, so Google sees this incredible tech being used on CNN. What happens next? Do they just show up with a giant, cartoonish bag of money? Joe: Pretty much. Keyhole was at a crossroads. They had a traditional venture capital offer on the table—a Series B funding round. But then Google comes knocking. And Google doesn't do Series B. They do "Series G"—for Google. They wanted to buy the whole thing. Lewis: That must have been a tough decision. Take the money and stay independent, or sell to the giant. Joe: The decision was basically made for them, and it happened in a classic Google way. Sergey Brin, one of Google's co-founders, got a link to the Keyhole software. He was supposed to be in a product review meeting for Picasa, the photo app. But he was so mesmerized by Keyhole that he completely derailed the meeting. He hijacked the projector and just started flying around the globe, showing everyone their houses. Lewis: That’s amazing. So it's like Google was this giant, creative playground, and Sergey just found a new, shiny toy he had to have, and he had the money to buy it. Joe: Exactly. He reportedly just turned to the room and said, "We should buy this company." And that was that. But what happened next is where the story gets even crazier. Google didn't just acquire Keyhole; they had also quietly acquired another tiny mapping startup from Australia called Where 2 Tech. Lewis: Wait, so Google had two different mapping teams that they'd just bought? Joe: Yes! And they basically threw them together in the same building and said, "Figure it out." The Keyhole team was used to a scrappy, survive-at-all-costs culture. They show up at the Googleplex, and it's this wonderland of free gourmet food, massage chairs, and volleyball courts. It was a massive culture shock. Lewis: That sounds like a recipe for chaos. Two teams, one goal, completely different backgrounds. How did they not just implode from turf wars and confusion? Joe: There was definitely tension. But two things happened. First, Google's leadership gave them a very simple, very Google-esque directive. The head of engineering, Wayne Rosing, met with John Hanke, looked at their product and their small but real revenue stream, and just said, "We shouldn't fuck this up." That was it. No grand strategy. Just, "You guys are smart, don't break it." Lewis: That's a surprising amount of trust. Joe: It gave them autonomy. The second thing was a friendly wager. The Where 2 Tech guys had built the front-end map interface, the part you see in the browser. The Keyhole team had the massive backend database of satellite imagery. Chikai Ohazama, one of the Keyhole engineers, bet the Where 2 Tech team dinner at an expensive restaurant that they couldn't integrate the two systems in a week. Lewis: And how long did it take? Joe: Less than 24 hours. The bet created this collaborative spark. It broke the ice and merged their efforts. They realized they weren't competitors; they were two halves of the same revolutionary product. And that product, born from this chaotic but brilliant fusion, was about to be unleashed on the world.

Joe: And when it was unleashed, it led to consequences no one, not even the visionaries at Google, could have predicted. The team was focused on solving a simple problem: getting lost. But they ended up creating a tool that could do so much more. Lewis: Like what? What's the first big, unexpected use case? Joe: Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The city of New Orleans was flooded, and people were trapped on their roofs. The Coast Guard was flying rescue helicopters, but they had a huge problem. 911 operators were getting calls with street addresses, but the helicopter pilots needed latitude and longitude coordinates to navigate. There was a disconnect. Lewis: So they knew people needed help, but they couldn't pinpoint exactly where. Joe: Right. Until a staff sergeant at the Coast Guard, on his own initiative, started using the recently launched Google Earth. He realized he could type a street address into the search bar, and it would instantly show him the exact spot on the map, complete with the GPS coordinates. He created a bridge between the victims and the rescuers. Lewis: That's incredible. So they were using Google Earth in the command center to guide helicopters in real-time? Joe: Yes. They estimate that this ad-hoc solution helped save hundreds of lives. It was a profound moment. The Keyhole team, now at Google, worked around the clock to get updated aerial imagery of the flooded areas onto the platform. It was this massive, grassroots effort. Lewis: That's a world-changing impact. Google must have put out a massive press release. "Google Saves Hundreds in Katrina." Why don't I remember that? Joe: Because they didn't. The head of PR at Google at the time told Kilday, "As amazing as the story is, it’s just not who we are... It’s not our style to pat ourselves on the back for something like this." They believed the product's impact should speak for itself. It was part of that early "Don't be evil" ethos. Lewis: Wow. That is a completely different approach to corporate communication than you'd see today. To have that story and just… sit on it. Joe: And the unexpected uses just kept coming. They released an API, a way for other developers to build on top of their map. A developer in San Francisco, frustrated with apartment hunting on Craigslist, created a "mash-up" called HousingMaps.com that plotted rental listings on a map. It was the prototype for what would become Zillow and Trulia. Lewis: So Google basically gave away the tools, and other people built billion-dollar industries on top of them. Joe: Exactly. They created a platform. And that platform's legacy extends even further. Remember John Hanke, the founder of Keyhole? After years at Google, he felt that "one-hit wonder" pressure. He wanted to swing the bat again. Lewis: He wanted to top Google Maps? That’s a tall order. Joe: He wanted to do something different. He was worried his kids were spending too much time indoors playing video games. So he went to Larry Page with an idea: a startup inside Google, focused on creating "real-world games" that would get people outside, exploring their cities. That startup was called Niantic. Lewis: Wait a minute. Niantic? As in… Pokémon GO? Joe: As in Pokémon GO. They first built a game called Ingress, which used a global map of landmarks and portals. And then, in 2016, they took that game engine, layered on the Pokémon brand, and launched Pokémon GO. It was built on the very same foundation of mapping the world that started with Keyhole. Lewis: So the entire augmented reality gaming industry, this idea of interacting with a digital layer on the real world, has its roots in this one mapping technology. That's a wild legacy. From a CIA contract to catching Pikachu in Central Park.

Joe: It's this incredible chain reaction. A desperate startup's 'cool party trick' gets saved by a war, supercharged by Google's 'think bigger' philosophy, and ends up not just helping us find our way, but saving lives and creating entirely new realities for us to play in. Lewis: The book's title, Never Lost Again, is almost an understatement. They didn't just solve the problem of being lost in a physical sense. They gave us a new way to find things, to see the world, and to connect with the physical space around us. It’s a dashboard for the planet. Joe: And it was built by people who were, in many ways, making it up as they went along. They were driven by curiosity, competition, and sometimes, just a friendly wager over dinner. It’s a reminder that the most transformative technologies often have the messiest, most human origins. Lewis: It really makes you wonder, what technologies are we using today that will have consequences we can't even begin to imagine in ten or twenty years? What's the modern equivalent of that "Superman demo"? Joe: That is the question. And we'd love to hear what you think. If you have a story about how Google Maps changed something for you, or a "can't believe I ever lived without it" moment, share it with us on our social channels. We'd love to read them. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.