Hacker News Reader

Comment by ynniv | Hacker News Reader

And specifically an application used to view satellite imagery, rather than the company that produced the imagery. They might as well credit Internet Explorer instead of Facebook. Taken to an extreme, they could have credited Windows XP for the reunion.

Somehow Google Earth is often credited for anything involving satellite imagery. He probably actually used Google Maps.

View on HN

I don't what your problem with the article is (both of you). To me it appears that he searched for the town most of the ten years. Once he found out what the name of the town was, the rest was easy. He might as well have flown there and asked around. Also Google Earth did not invent satellite imagery, nor did Google produce it, but it made it accessible for the broad public. This is why Google Earth gets so much credit.

It does not make sense to credit Windows XP nor Internet Explorer, because he might as well have used Firefox on a Mac. But it does make sense to credit the advance of computer technology in general. And I think to a degree that is the subtext of the article.

ISTR Microsoft making satellite imagery available on the web long before Google did.

Can't remember the name of it now though. It seemed mostly like an embarrassingly parallel benchmark designed to make a success story for SQL server.

Here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research_Maps Microsoft Terraserver since June 1998.

> Somehow Google Earth is often credited for anything involving satellite imagery. He probably actually used Google Maps.

I doubt that without Google's effort, this very valuable database of satellite and aerial photography would be available to everyone.

It is more akin to crediting a library for its content : it did not write it, but gave you access to it.

There was the Terraserver (not terraserver.com) long before Google Maps/Earth.

If I recall correctly, this was a paid service, no ?

NASA has actually put together a beautiful product, that I think is even more beautiful than Google Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/

But it happened several years after Google Earth. They would never have done that otherwise.

It sounds like he used a combination of Arial footage and street views to locate the town. Having located it he could have traveled there or even called, but instead use other services to talk to people in the area. So, IMO it really was Google street views coupled with maps that let him find the place.

PS: He remembered the Khandwa train station and surrounding area not a street name and not what the area looked like from space.

I don't think google has street view available in India.

@sausax, no need to think whether Google have street views (note not Streetview) in India - http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&... is an image of Khandwa station on Google. IIRC Google Earth have used Panoramio (sp?) for location images for some time, longer than they've offered Streetview or indeed location views on Google Maps.

Any particular reason to chose Khandwa? (I am curious as I am from that town and it is not particularly well known)

Unless I made a mistake Khandwa is where the man was from and he tracked his family from a memory of the station there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com