'Google’s Road Map to Global Domination' diff viewer (3/4)

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Google’s Road Map to Global Domination	Google’s Road Map to Global Domination
2013-12-15 01:25:06 UTC	2014-01-08 17:50:17 UTC (25 days later)
Fifty-five miles and three days down the Colorado River from the put-in at Lee’s Ferry, near the Utah-Arizona border, the two rafts in our little flotilla suddenly encountered a storm. It sneaked up from behind, preceded by only a cool breeze. With the canyon walls squeezing the sky to a ribbon of blue, we didn’t see the thunderhead until it was nearly on top of us.	Fifty-five miles and three days down the Colorado River from the put-in at Lee’s Ferry, near the Utah-Arizona border, the two rafts in our little flotilla suddenly encountered a storm. It sneaked up from behind, preceded by only a cool breeze. With the canyon walls squeezing the sky to a ribbon of blue, we didn’t see the thunderhead until it was nearly on top of us.
I was seated in the front of the lead raft. Pole position meant taking a dunk through the rapids, but it also put me next to Luc Vincent, the expedition’s leader. Vincent is the man responsible for all the imagery in Google’s online maps. He’s in charge of everything from choosing satellite pictures to deploying Google’s planes around the world to sending its camera-equipped cars down every road to even this, a float through the Grand Canyon. The raft trip was a mapping expedition that was also serving as a celebration: Google Maps had just introduced a major redesign, and the outing was a way of rewarding some of the team’s members.	I was seated in the front of the lead raft. Pole position meant taking a dunk through the rapids, but it also put me next to Luc Vincent, the expedition’s leader. Vincent is the man responsible for all the imagery in Google’s online maps. He’s in charge of everything from choosing satellite pictures to deploying Google’s planes around the world to sending its camera-equipped cars down every road to even this, a float through the Grand Canyon. The raft trip was a mapping expedition that was also serving as a celebration: Google Maps had just introduced a major redesign, and the outing was a way of rewarding some of the team’s members.
Vincent wore a black T-shirt with the eagle-globe-and-anchor insignia of the United States Marine Corps on his chest and the slogan “Pain is weakness leaving the body” across his back. Though short in stature, he has the upper-body strength of an avid rock climber. He chose to get his Ph.D. in computer vision, he told me, because the lab happened to be close to Fontainebleau — the famous climbing spot in France. While completing his postdoc at the Harvard Robotics Lab, he led a successful expedition up Denali, the highest peak in North America.	Vincent wore a black T-shirt with the eagle-globe-and-anchor insignia of the United States Marine Corps on his chest and the slogan “Pain is weakness leaving the body” across his back. Though short in stature, he has the upper-body strength of an avid rock climber. He chose to get his Ph.D. in computer vision, he told me, because the lab happened to be close to Fontainebleau — the famous climbing spot in France. While completing his postdoc at the Harvard Robotics Lab, he led a successful expedition up Denali, the highest peak in North America.
A Frenchman who has lived half his 49 years in the United States, Vincent was never in the Marines. But he is a leader in a new great game: the Internet land grab, which can be reduced to three key battles over three key conceptual territories. What came first, conquered by Google’s superior search algorithms. Who was next, and Facebook was the victor. But where, arguably the biggest prize of all, has yet to be completely won.	A Frenchman who has lived half his 49 years in the United States, Vincent was never in the Marines. But he is a leader in a new great game: the Internet land grab, which can be reduced to three key battles over three key conceptual territories. What came first, conquered by Google’s superior search algorithms. Who was next, and Facebook was the victor. But where, arguably the biggest prize of all, has yet to be completely won.
Where-type questions — the kind that result in a little map popping up on the search-results page — account for some 20 percent of all Google queries done from the desktop. But ultimately more important by far is location-awareness, the sort of geographical information that our phones and other mobile devices already require in order to function. In the future, such location-awareness will be built into more than just phones. All of our stuff will know where it is — and that awareness will imbue the real world with some of the power of the virtual. Your house keys will tell you that they’re still on your desk at work. Your tools will remind you that they were lent to a friend. And your car will be able to drive itself on an errand to retrieve both your keys and your tools.	Where-type questions — the kind that result in a little map popping up on the search-results page — account for some 20 percent of all Google queries done from the desktop. But ultimately more important by far is location-awareness, the sort of geographical information that our phones and other mobile devices already require in order to function. In the future, such location-awareness will be built into more than just phones. All of our stuff will know where it is — and that awareness will imbue the real world with some of the power of the virtual. Your house keys will tell you that they’re still on your desk at work. Your tools will remind you that they were lent to a friend. And your car will be able to drive itself on an errand to retrieve both your keys and your tools.
While no one can say exactly how we will get from the current moment to that Jetsonian future, one thing for sure can be said about location-awareness: maps are required. Tomorrow’s map, integrally connected to everything that moves (the keys, the tools, the car), will be so fundamental to their operation that the map will, in effect, be their operating system. A map is to location-awareness as Windows is to a P.C. And as the history of Microsoft makes clear, a company that controls the operating system controls just about everything. So the competition to make the best maps, the thinking goes, is more than a struggle over who dominates the trillion-dollar smartphone market; it’s a contest over the future itself.	While no one can say exactly how we will get from the current moment to that Jetsonian future, one thing for sure can be said about location-awareness: maps are required. Tomorrow’s map, integrally connected to everything that moves (the keys, the tools, the car), will be so fundamental to their operation that the map will, in effect, be their operating system. A map is to location-awareness as Windows is to a P.C. And as the history of Microsoft makes clear, a company that controls the operating system controls just about everything. So the competition to make the best maps, the thinking goes, is more than a struggle over who dominates the trillion-dollar smartphone market; it’s a contest over the future itself.
Google was relatively late to this territory. Its map was only a few months old when it was featured at Tim O’Reilly’s inaugural Where 2.0 conference in 2005. O’Reilly is a publisher and a well-known visionary in Silicon Valley who is convinced that the Internet is evolving into a single vast, shared computer, one of whose most important individual functions, or subroutines, is location-awareness.	Google was relatively late to this territory. Its map was only a few months old when it was featured at Tim O’Reilly’s inaugural Where 2.0 conference in 2005. O’Reilly is a publisher and a well-known visionary in Silicon Valley who is convinced that the Internet is evolving into a single vast, shared computer, one of whose most important individual functions, or subroutines, is location-awareness.
Google’s original map was rudimentary, essentially a digitized road atlas. Like the maps from Microsoft and Yahoo, it used licensed data, and areas outside the United States and Europe were represented as blue emptiness. Google’s innovation was the web interface: its map was dragable, zoomable, panable.	Google’s original map was rudimentary, essentially a digitized road atlas. Like the maps from Microsoft and Yahoo, it used licensed data, and areas outside the United States and Europe were represented as blue emptiness. Google’s innovation was the web interface: its map was dragable, zoomable, panable.
These new capabilities were among the first implementations of a technology that turned what had been a static medium — a web of pages — into a dynamic one. MapQuest and similar sites showed you maps; Google let you interact with them. Developers soon realized that they could take advantage of that dynamism to hack Google’s map, add their own data and create their very own location-based services.	These new capabilities were among the first implementations of a technology that turned what had been a static medium — a web of pages — into a dynamic one. MapQuest and similar sites showed you maps; Google let you interact with them. Developers soon realized that they could take advantage of that dynamism to hack Google’s map, add their own data and create their very own location-based services.
A computer scientist named Paul Rademacher did just that when he invented a technique to facilitate apartment-hunting in San Francisco. Frustrated by the limited, bare-bones nature of Craigslist’s classified ads and inspired by Google’s interactive quality, Rademacher spent six weeks overlaying Google’s map with apartment listings from Craigslist. The result, HousingMaps.com, was one of the web’s first mash-ups.	A computer scientist named Paul Rademacher did just that when he invented a technique to facilitate apartment-hunting in San Francisco. Frustrated by the limited, bare-bones nature of Craigslist’s classified ads and inspired by Google’s interactive quality, Rademacher spent six weeks overlaying Google’s map with apartment listings from Craigslist. The result, HousingMaps.com, was one of the web’s first mash-ups.
Google never imagined that its service, which it called Maps, could be co-opted like that: its product was designed to be a Google brand extension, not a database that outside developers could use without permission. “We were faced with a choice,” Mano Marks, one of the engineers responsible for early versions of Google Maps, recalls in a conversation with Rademacher that Google has put on YouTube. “We could either sue him or hire him.” To Google’s credit, Rademacher was hired.	Google never imagined that its service, which it called Maps, could be co-opted like that: its product was designed to be a Google brand extension, not a database that outside developers could use without permission. “We were faced with a choice,” Mano Marks, one of the engineers responsible for early versions of Google Maps, recalls in a conversation with Rademacher that Google has put on YouTube. “We could either sue him or hire him.” To Google’s credit, Rademacher was hired.
Rademacher’s mash-up showed Google that the map could be more than just something that people glance at to keep from getting lost. By opening up its map to everyone, Google could perhaps make itself into the one indispensable cog in the giant collaborative computer that was emerging. “HousingMaps was when people realized that making [map] data available to other programmers was incredibly powerful,” O’Reilly says. “Google never looked back.”	Rademacher’s mash-up showed Google that the map could be more than just something that people glance at to keep from getting lost. By opening up its map to everyone, Google could perhaps make itself into the one indispensable cog in the giant collaborative computer that was emerging. “HousingMaps was when people realized that making [map] data available to other programmers was incredibly powerful,” O’Reilly says. “Google never looked back.”
Rademacher helped Google develop and publish what’s known as an application programming interface for Google Maps. Think of an A.P.I. as a programmers-only side entrance into the Google mapmaking machine. No longer did they have to repeat Rademacher’s hack; instead, with access to the A.P.I., developers could combine Google’s free map with their own data and end up with a cool mash-up like HousingMaps — or build an entire company based on Google Maps. The real estate site Redfin, for example, is basically just that: pictures of and information about houses for sale layered over a map from Google. The same goes for AirBnB, but with room rentals. Uber and Lyft, the quasi-taxi services. RelayRides. TaskRabbit. NeighborGoods. They may not be household names (yet), but there’s an entire Google Maps-based ecosystem out there.	Rademacher helped Google develop and publish what’s known as an application programming interface for Google Maps. Think of an A.P.I. as a programmers-only side entrance into the Google mapmaking machine. No longer did they have to repeat Rademacher’s hack; instead, with access to the A.P.I., developers could combine Google’s free map with their own data and end up with a cool mash-up like HousingMaps — or build an entire company based on Google Maps. The real estate site Redfin, for example, is basically just that: pictures of and information about houses for sale layered over a map from Google. The same goes for AirBnB, but with room rentals. Uber and Lyft, the quasi-taxi services. RelayRides. TaskRabbit. NeighborGoods. They may not be household names (yet), but there’s an entire Google Maps-based ecosystem out there.
Behind Vincent and me, near the center of the raft and mounted about 10 feet above the surface of the river, was our expedition’s payload: a green orb, about the size of a soccer ball and dimpled with 15 lenses pointing in different directions. This custom-made panoramic camera is what has made Google’s Street View possible. Street View is the feature within Google Maps that allows you to pull up a panoramic photograph taken from a particular spot on a given street. For years now, cars with roof-mounted panoramic cameras have been driving the world’s roads while taking pictures every yard or so.	Behind Vincent and me, near the center of the raft and mounted about 10 feet above the surface of the river, was our expedition’s payload: a green orb, about the size of a soccer ball and dimpled with 15 lenses pointing in different directions. This custom-made panoramic camera is what has made Google’s Street View possible. Street View is the feature within Google Maps that allows you to pull up a panoramic photograph taken from a particular spot on a given street. For years now, cars with roof-mounted panoramic cameras have been driving the world’s roads while taking pictures every yard or so.
There is a version of the car-mounted Street View camera that is designed to be worn like a backpack — that’s the Trekker. For the raft-trip, the Trekker camera-orb was programmed to snap its 15 (virtual) shutters every few seconds. These pictures would be stored in the camera’s computers; tagged with precise coordinates of latitude, longitude and altitude; and then later digitally melded into one 360-degree image. Once the pictures collected on the raft trip are incorporated into Google’s world map, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to access an immersive virtual-reality view from anywhere along the bottom of the Grand Canyon.	There is a version of the car-mounted Street View camera that is designed to be worn like a backpack — that’s the Trekker. For the raft-trip, the Trekker camera-orb was programmed to snap its 15 (virtual) shutters every few seconds. These pictures would be stored in the camera’s computers; tagged with precise coordinates of latitude, longitude and altitude; and then later digitally melded into one 360-degree image. Once the pictures collected on the raft trip are incorporated into Google’s world map, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to access an immersive virtual-reality view from anywhere along the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
As a light rain started to fall, I wondered aloud if on this trip we had already taken more photos from the bottom of the canyon than all the previous trips combined. Maybe around 20,000 people in a given year run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and it’s the sort of trip that was all but unheard-of before the 1960s.	As a light rain started to fall, I wondered aloud if on this trip we had already taken more photos from the bottom of the canyon than all the previous trips combined. Maybe around 20,000 people in a given year run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and it’s the sort of trip that was all but unheard-of before the 1960s.
Vincent performed a quick calculation of our trip so far without a calculator or even pencil and paper: two cameras on two rafts, each taking 15 shots every two seconds, for three eight-hour days, versus 20,000 people a year taking snapshots for 50 years.	Vincent performed a quick calculation of our trip so far without a calculator or even pencil and paper: two cameras on two rafts, each taking 15 shots every two seconds, for three eight-hour days, versus 20,000 people a year taking snapshots for 50 years.
“Not yet,” he said. “By the end of the trip, I would think so — possibly.”	“Not yet,” he said. “By the end of the trip, I would think so — possibly.”
As we talked, lightning struck behind us, then to one side, then to the other. The orb and its associated computers and copper cables were all lashed to an aluminum mast, forming a conductive path reaching down to the several inches of water sloshing in the bottom of the raft. The consensus was that the Street View camera would make a decent lightning rod. Word was passed to the boss.	As we talked, lightning struck behind us, then to one side, then to the other. The orb and its associated computers and copper cables were all lashed to an aluminum mast, forming a conductive path reaching down to the several inches of water sloshing in the bottom of the raft. The consensus was that the Street View camera would make a decent lightning rod. Word was passed to the boss.
“That’s why we brought two,” Vincent said, shrugging.	“That’s why we brought two,” Vincent said, shrugging.
One perk of being a Google engineer is being encouraged to devote 20 percent of your time to your own project. Back in 2004, Street View was Vincent’s. The idea was to photograph every inch of every street in San Francisco and put those pictures inside the map. It was a big job, and Vincent had a lot of people at Google pitching in to help. (Larry Page, one of the company’s founders, was a trailblazer; in 2001, he collected images by driving around town with a video camera mounted to the side of his car.) Eventually, Street View would become the next breakthrough for Google Maps after the introduction of its programming interface. But Google was not the first company to turn this idea into reality; Amazon was.	One perk of being a Google engineer is being encouraged to devote 20 percent of your time to your own project. Back in 2004, Street View was Vincent’s. The idea was to photograph every inch of every street in San Francisco and put those pictures inside the map. It was a big job, and Vincent had a lot of people at Google pitching in to help. (Larry Page, one of the company’s founders, was a trailblazer; in 2001, he collected images by driving around town with a video camera mounted to the side of his car.) Eventually, Street View would become the next breakthrough for Google Maps after the introduction of its programming interface. But Google was not the first company to turn this idea into reality; Amazon was.
In 2005, A9.com, Amazon’s skunk works for search technology, unveiled an innovative feature called Block View. It was meant to be a newfangled Yellow Pages where you could find the phone number and address of a local business — as well as a photograph of its storefront. Block View was discontinued after only 20 months, but not before Microsoft introduced its own version, Streetside, that was essentially identical, except that Microsoft’s pictures of streets and storefronts were seen through a digitally created framing device. Though the photos were taken from car-roof-mounted cameras, they were presented online as if you were looking through a windshield. The result was dorky, but it was one solution to the vexing problem of coming up with a user interface. How do you move through a map made of photographs? Microsoft’s answer: In a virtual car.	In 2005, A9.com, Amazon’s skunk works for search technology, unveiled an innovative feature called Block View. It was meant to be a newfangled Yellow Pages where you could find the phone number and address of a local business — as well as a photograph of its storefront. Block View was discontinued after only 20 months, but not before Microsoft introduced its own version, Streetside, that was essentially identical, except that Microsoft’s pictures of streets and storefronts were seen through a digitally created framing device. Though the photos were taken from car-roof-mounted cameras, they were presented online as if you were looking through a windshield. The result was dorky, but it was one solution to the vexing problem of coming up with a user interface. How do you move through a map made of photographs? Microsoft’s answer: In a virtual car.
Google ultimately developed a more elegant user interface. Instead of representing movement along a street as flipping through a filmstriplike series of photographs, as Block View and Streetside did, Google pursued the idea of a panoramic camera — what would become the green orb — and used it to take a panoramic photo every few feet. The effect of hopping from one photo to the next in Street View is one of walking through virtual space.	Google ultimately developed a more elegant user interface. Instead of representing movement along a street as flipping through a filmstriplike series of photographs, as Block View and Streetside did, Google pursued the idea of a panoramic camera — what would become the green orb — and used it to take a panoramic photo every few feet. The effect of hopping from one photo to the next in Street View is one of walking through virtual space.
Microsoft’s Streetside debuted in 2006 with a photographic rendering of parts of Seattle and San Francisco. Google’s Street View arrived a year later, with five cities: San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver. Google eventually overwhelmed Microsoft with a more aggressive surveying program. Street View now covers 3,000 cities in 54 countries, and it has gone beyond streets and onto train tracks, hiking trails, even rivers. A section of the Amazon was the first river, appearing last year; the Thames made its debut in October; and the Colorado will be available by the end of the year. “We want to paint the world,” Vincent says. When I asked him what level of resolution we were talking about, he said, “About one pixel to the inch.”	Microsoft’s Streetside debuted in 2006 with a photographic rendering of parts of Seattle and San Francisco. Google’s Street View arrived a year later, with five cities: San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver. Google eventually overwhelmed Microsoft with a more aggressive surveying program. Street View now covers 3,000 cities in 54 countries, and it has gone beyond streets and onto train tracks, hiking trails, even rivers. A section of the Amazon was the first river, appearing last year; the Thames made its debut in October; and the Colorado will be available by the end of the year. “We want to paint the world,” Vincent says. When I asked him what level of resolution we were talking about, he said, “About one pixel to the inch.”
By threading photograph after photograph along the lines that mark the byways and highways on the map, Vincent and his team are making, in effect, one large photograph of the globe. It’s a neat trick, perhaps even the next conceptual leap for cartography, but like most things Google spends a lot of money on, very likely to be more useful than it first appears. Like most people when they first encounter Street View, O’Reilly used it to check out the photo of his house. But then, he says, he later began to see the potential of the data collected by Google and to imagine more and more uses for it.	By threading photograph after photograph along the lines that mark the byways and highways on the map, Vincent and his team are making, in effect, one large photograph of the globe. It’s a neat trick, perhaps even the next conceptual leap for cartography, but like most things Google spends a lot of money on, very likely to be more useful than it first appears. Like most people when they first encounter Street View, O’Reilly used it to check out the photo of his house. But then, he says, he later began to see the potential of the data collected by Google and to imagine more and more uses for it.
Street View turns out to be incredibly valuable for all sorts of things — but above all for mapmaking. By 2008, Google was ready to wean itself from the licensed data that underpinned the first generation of Google Maps by greatly expanding its database of geographical information instead, which was called Oyster. The team added terabytes worth of raw data tagged to locations, everything they could get their hands on. In the United States, some of the best information is free and comes from the federal government: U.S. Geological Survey and Forest Service reports, census records and the like. Google bought other map data outright, from both the United States and abroad. But in most of the developing world, there was simply no good map data to be had at any price. In places like India, Oyster made do with only poor-quality tracings of the streets taken from satellite photos.	Street View turns out to be incredibly valuable for all sorts of things — but above all for mapmaking. By 2008, Google was ready to wean itself from the licensed data that underpinned the first generation of Google Maps by greatly expanding its database of geographical information instead, which was called Oyster. The team added terabytes worth of raw data tagged to locations, everything they could get their hands on. In the United States, some of the best information is free and comes from the federal government: U.S. Geological Survey and Forest Service reports, census records and the like. Google bought other map data outright, from both the United States and abroad. But in most of the developing world, there was simply no good map data to be had at any price. In places like India, Oyster made do with only poor-quality tracings of the streets taken from satellite photos.
Creating one big map from hundreds or even thousands of other maps means comparing each map with all the others to see how they line up. They never do. Including crucial details about address and turn-restriction information — necessary for generating driving instructions — has traditionally been a matter of sending cars out to drive the roads in question and waiting for the drivers to file their reports, a process called ground-truthing. Street View provided Google with a shortcut. Not only were the GPS tracks from the Street View cars great for reconciling map data, but the pictures taken by the panoramic camera also made it possible to go into Street View and look around for turn-restriction information. Google can ground-truth its data in virtual space. In Hyderabad, India, Google has a staff of more than 2,000 ground-truthers “driving” through cyberspace every day, cross-referencing map data with the Street View pictures.	Creating one big map from hundreds or even thousands of other maps means comparing each map with all the others to see how they line up. They never do. Including crucial details about address and turn-restriction information — necessary for generating driving instructions — has traditionally been a matter of sending cars out to drive the roads in question and waiting for the drivers to file their reports, a process called ground-truthing. Street View provided Google with a shortcut. Not only were the GPS tracks from the Street View cars great for reconciling map data, but the pictures taken by the panoramic camera also made it possible to go into Street View and look around for turn-restriction information. Google can ground-truth its data in virtual space. In Hyderabad, India, Google has a staff of more than 2,000 ground-truthers “driving” through cyberspace every day, cross-referencing map data with the Street View pictures.
In addition to the human operators, pattern-recognition bots search the archive for addresses: Google’s computer-vision programs look for house numbers, street signs, even the bespectacled face of Colonel Sanders — in which case the bot will flag the corresponding point on the map with a note that there’s probably a KFC franchise located there. “When we started, Street View was just some sci-fi idea,” Vincent says, “but now, it’s the backbone.”	In addition to the human operators, pattern-recognition bots search the archive for addresses: Google’s computer-vision programs look for house numbers, street signs, even the bespectacled face of Colonel Sanders — in which case the bot will flag the corresponding point on the map with a note that there’s probably a KFC franchise located there. “When we started, Street View was just some sci-fi idea,” Vincent says, “but now, it’s the backbone.”
The rainfall hitting the hot canyon walls produced a vaporous mist that put the entire canyon into soft focus. Vincent called back to the crew working the camera: “These panos, we must keep them. I think they will be quite artistic.”	The rainfall hitting the hot canyon walls produced a vaporous mist that put the entire canyon into soft focus. Vincent called back to the crew working the camera: “These panos, we must keep them. I think they will be quite artistic.”
During a routine Street View mission, pictures spoiled by rain are rejected. Street View drivers are instructed to drive only in the summer months, when the sun is high, in order to keep the light relatively consistent from region to region. If it rains, they have to pull over and wait out the storm. But a raft trip is a different story. And besides, Vincent was right: the scene before us was incredibly beautiful. Everyone was wide-eyed. “I’m trying to burn these images into my retinas, so I never forget this place,” I said.	During a routine Street View mission, pictures spoiled by rain are rejected. Street View drivers are instructed to drive only in the summer months, when the sun is high, in order to keep the light relatively consistent from region to region. If it rains, they have to pull over and wait out the storm. But a raft trip is a different story. And besides, Vincent was right: the scene before us was incredibly beautiful. Everyone was wide-eyed. “I’m trying to burn these images into my retinas, so I never forget this place,” I said.
“You never will,” Vincent said, “because Street View is there to help you to remember.”	“You never will,” Vincent said, “because Street View is there to help you to remember.”
It was a trippy moment, the realization that I was going to be able to look back at my own outsourced memory one day. It brought to mind the writer Jorge Luis Borges. In a short story entitled “On Exactitude in Science,” Borges tells of a long-ago empire where “the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.” In Borges’s empire, the importance of the cartographic guild grew as the map grew, until finally the empire was completely covered by a map of itself.	It was a trippy moment, the realization that I was going to be able to look back at my own outsourced memory one day. It brought to mind the writer Jorge Luis Borges. In a short story entitled “On Exactitude in Science,” Borges tells of a long-ago empire where “the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.” In Borges’s empire, the importance of the cartographic guild grew as the map grew, until finally the empire was completely covered by a map of itself.
After the downpour faded, I suggested to Vincent that there was something Borgesian about this project of his. This raft trip was effectively sucking the Grand Canyon into Google’s vast cartographic oyster — indeed, his green orbs were capturing the entire world. “What happens,” I asked, “when Street View grows to be as big as the territory it covers?”	After the downpour faded, I suggested to Vincent that there was something Borgesian about this project of his. This raft trip was effectively sucking the Grand Canyon into Google’s vast cartographic oyster — indeed, his green orbs were capturing the entire world. “What happens,” I asked, “when Street View grows to be as big as the territory it covers?”
Vincent answered with a question of his own: “How many photos would you need if you wanted one picture taken every 10 meters across the earth’s surface?”	Vincent answered with a question of his own: “How many photos would you need if you wanted one picture taken every 10 meters across the earth’s surface?”
“Um, a googol?” A wild guess.	“Um, a googol?” A wild guess.
“The answer is easy once you know how much land there is in the world.”	“The answer is easy once you know how much land there is in the world.”
I didn’t, so I had no idea how many individual panoramic photos you would need to get the entire planet inside Street View.	I didn’t, so I had no idea how many individual panoramic photos you would need to get the entire planet inside Street View.
“Well over a trillion,” he said, “and we are nowhere close.”	“Well over a trillion,” he said, “and we are nowhere close.”