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To one of the 9 upvoters in the know: can you tell us what this means? Google used a high rez picture of one piece of land. So, what's the point?

Or is that the point? The fact that Google made an exception to its algorithm for a conference is newsworthy?

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I think it's interesting. What I'm wondering is, does that mean given current technology and "infinite" budget, Google could have this high a resolution for the whole planet? What stumbling blocks, obvious or otherwise, are preventing such an upgrade?

Or is this just a one-time hack where they took the picture from an helicopter or something... In other words, Will it Scale(tm)?

Yes it's most likely from a plane or helicopter. Most of the highest resolution stuff in google maps/earth is (the big cities, etc). And no, it won't scale.

A lot of the better images are aerial instead of from satellites. Close-up like this is not common though, costs would probably be insane.

I guess this image was donated by an independent person to Google, a employee maybe.

Actually, we booked an overflight (plane) a couple of years back at Foo.

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