Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s Then Totally Blew It

We were trying to use terraserver back in the day to provide additional value to our business offering which was highly terrain based (we were doing 3d terrain analysis and wanted imagery to add to it).

But let's be honest it isn't just that Microsoft didn't see the value in the data, it was they weren't very friendly in the terms they offered for using the data. Not saying Google is a panacea, but Google realized if they let small businesses generate some traffic (with no to minimal costs) that the end result was "addiction" and revenue as those small businesses grew.

Microsoft was too focused on dollars and proving their engineering chops. Not that I have anything but respect for the engineering chops, but still. Ironically, we were also based on Digital Alpha servers running Windows, damn was that weird but fun and oddly extremely powerful.

Microsoft: Always reinventing the wheel, never making it round.