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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

This is a great read about the technology and ideas behind Google earth.

I have one criticism: the story confounds stealing the idea (in itself a very fishy concept) and patent violation. It's a popular misconception that these two things are relatated and to the authors defense it probably is the same in the Netflix documentary. However I think it's important to be precise when talking about these things.

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I think it's great to give credit to ART+COM for making the demo they did at the time they did it.

Building a PC app that does it much better is also worth recognition IMO, and the Netflix show denies that.

The IP issues were resolved, but I think it was important to point out why there was no infringement for people who might not understand the details as well.

The US patent system is broken anyway, so who cares? It still seems likely that they stole stuff. Google used the same quadtree numbering as Art and Com, that being a coincidence is very unlikely

> It still seems likely that they stole stuff.

(Illegal) Copying is not theft

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

In practice they stole the opportunity to make money with what the ART and COM guys had done.

Which is called competition in the business world, and is generally allowed unless some specific law is broken.

It's not unlikely at all. We're talking about numbering four tiles in a square, right? There are only two natural ways to do it for anyone who writes in a left-to-right, top-to-bottom language:

    1 2

    3 4

Or (less likely):

    1 3

    2 4

In binary, note that both of these patterns naturally assign one bit to left-right, and the other to up-down, which is a very desirable outcome. E.g.:

    00   01  (0x row)

    10   11  (1x row)

   (x0  (x1
   col) col)

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