They probably got it from Snow Crash. The oldest surviving globes of the known world date back to 1492 according to Wikipedia and the Greeks probably created their own variations a few millennia ago.
Turtles, turtles, turtles! All the way down.
you just described the definition of good design
... like searching for text on the internet
It's actually patented by a porn site and YouTube pays them for the licensed use of it
Source? I don't see any possible way a thumbnail playing on hover is patentable.
It was so natural and intuitive that Youtube's version STILL doesn't compare to how good, fast, seemless, and unintrusive it is done on the porn sites, years later.