This was revealed by Tom Barclay from Microsoft.
As it happens, Microsoft built a vast one terabyte storage system calledTerraserverin 1997.
One of the components of Terraserver was firstpublicly available satellite imagery of the world.
Essentially, Microsoft built Google Earth four years ahead of Google.
Google was an information company first.
They saw the value of the information.
By contrast, Google used the information from launching Google Earth in 2001 to its advantage.
you could read Motherboards full interview with Barclay here.
source: www.techworm.net
