Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality

by Bill Kilday

Overview

As enlightening as The Facebook Effect, Elon Musk, and Chaos Monkeys—the compelling, behind-the-scenes story of the creation of one of the most essential applications ever devised, and the rag-tag team that built it and changed how we navigate the world

Never Lost Again chronicles the evolution of mapping technology—the "overnight success twenty years in the making." Bill Kilday takes us behind the scenes of the tech’s development, and introduces to the team that gave us not only Google Maps but Google Earth, and most recently, Pokémon GO.

He takes us back to the beginning to Keyhole—a cash-strapped startup mapping company started by a small-town Texas boy named John Hanke, that nearly folded when the tech bubble burst. While a contract with the CIA kept them afloat, the company’s big break came with the first invasion of Iraq; CNN used their technology to cover the war and made it famous. Then Google came on the scene, buying the company and relaunching the software as Google Maps and Google Earth. Eventually, Hanke’s original company was spun back out of Google, and is now responsible for Pokémon GO and the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

Kilday, the marketing director for Keyhole and Google Maps, was there from the earliest days, and offers a personal look behind the scenes at the tech and the minds developing it. But this book isn’t only a look back at the past; it is also a glimpse of what’s to come. Kilday reveals how emerging map-based technologies including virtual reality and driverless cars are going to upend our lives once again.

Never Lost Again shows us how our worldview changed dramatically as a result of vision, imagination, and implementation. It’s a crazy story. And it all started with a really good map.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062673046
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/29/2018
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Bill Kilday’s twenty-five-year career in technology and game marketing has centered on maps and augmented reality. He served as marketing director for digital mapping start-up Keyhole, and marketing lead for Google’s Geo division during the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth. He is currently VP of marketing for Niantic Inc., a spinout company from Google responsible for GPS-based games Ingress, Pokémon GO, and the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The youngest of eight children, Kilday was born in Houston, Texas, and now lives in Austin, Texas, with his family. He has a terrible sense of direction.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Starting Point xi

Where are We Going?: The Start-Up Years

1 The Superman Thing 3

2 Powers of Ten 17

3 The Green Folder 33

4 Out of Gas 51

5 Situation Room 71

6 Behind the Curtain 85

7 Series B or Series G? 101

Recalculating: The Google Years

8 Feeling Lucky 117

9 Table for 33 133

10 A Friendly Wager in Building 41 157

11 Launching Google Maps Mania 175

12 Sparking a New Industry 193

13 Hello, Google Earth 207

14 Dashboard for the Planet 227

15 You: A Blue Dot 245

16 Okay, Google, Where Am I? 259

17 Street Cred 275

18 4,000 Lattes 287

19 Google's New Eye in the Sky 295

20 Project Ground Truth 303

21 Moonshot Complete. Now on to Mars. 319

Epilogue: Did You Get One? 333

Author's Note 341

Acknowledgments 343

Editorial Reviews

Kilday makes you feel like you were there in person for the incredible rise of Google Maps and the geolocation industries that were built on top of it. Get the inside scoop on this world-changing technology from a talented storyteller who makes every page fun.” — Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory

“In Never Lost Again, Kilday takes us back to the origins of the Google mapping revolution, offering a personal, insider’s account of the startups, people and technologies behind it all.  It’s a wild ride, and they don’t always take the most direct route, but they end up changing the way we navigate the world. It’s a five-star trip!” — David Richter, Global Head of Business and Corporate Development, Uber

“the author crafts an engaging, blow-by-blow account of people and events that made mapping an unusually powerful tool...Informative, entertaining reading for nontechies.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Will appeal to those looking for the inside scoop on the business side of tech. But Kilday provides enough detail on the development of Google Maps—from CD-ROMs to negotiating prices of data sets to the development of “geocoding”—that this will also appeal to tech geeks and map nerds.” — Booklist

“Every would-be founder should take advantage of the hours saved by map technology and read this book.  It is an epic of tradeshow demo hell, cash flow struggles, engineering brilliance and sheer perseverance that delivered one of the miracles of our age.  It’s a captivating yarn with insider details and story-telling other start-up books rarely seem to capture and bring to life.” — Bing Gordon, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and previous CCO of Electronic Arts

“Never Lost Again is an entertaining and inspiring story of perseverance and determination.” — Inc.

From the Publisher

Kilday makes you feel like you were there in person for the incredible rise of Google Maps and the geolocation industries that were built on top of it. Get the inside scoop on this world-changing technology from a talented storyteller who makes every page fun.

Joshua Baer

Never Lost Again is an entertaining and inspiring story of perseverance and determination.

Inc.

Will appeal to those looking for the inside scoop on the business side of tech. But Kilday provides enough detail on the development of Google Maps—from CD-ROMs to negotiating prices of data sets to the development of “geocoding”—that this will also appeal to tech geeks and map nerds.

Booklist

Every would-be founder should take advantage of the hours saved by map technology and read this book.  It is an epic of tradeshow demo hell, cash flow struggles, engineering brilliance and sheer perseverance that delivered one of the miracles of our age.  It’s a captivating yarn with insider details and story-telling other start-up books rarely seem to capture and bring to life.

Bing Gordon

In Never Lost Again, Kilday takes us back to the origins of the Google mapping revolution, offering a personal, insider’s account of the startups, people and technologies behind it all.  It’s a wild ride, and they don’t always take the most direct route, but they end up changing the way we navigate the world. It’s a five-star trip!

David Richter

Will appeal to those looking for the inside scoop on the business side of tech. But Kilday provides enough detail on the development of Google Maps—from CD-ROMs to negotiating prices of data sets to the development of “geocoding”—that this will also appeal to tech geeks and map nerds.

Booklist

Never Lost Again is an entertaining and inspiring story of perseverance and determination.

Inc.

2018-04-24
An insider's account of the mapping technology that gave rise to Google Maps.Google's mapping service provides satellite imagery, street maps, panoramic street views, real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for about 1 billion users monthly. A popular app on iPhones and other devices, it has spurred industries from Yelp to Priceline to Uber. In this bright, highly personal debut, Kilday, a vice president at Niantic, which developed the augmented reality game Pokemon Go, describes his role in the mapping story, from the 1999 inception of a struggling tech startup named Keyhole, through the technology's enormous exposure as part of CNN's 24/7 coverage of the U.S.-led Iraq invasion, and the 2004 acquisition of Keyhole by Google, which turned the software into wildly popular Google Maps and Google Earth. Drawing on his experiences as marketing director at both Keyhole and Google Maps, the author crafts an engaging, blow-by-blow account of people and events that made mapping an unusually powerful tool for the military and intelligence communities, for commercial real estate interests, and eventually for anyone looking for a street address or just curious to see his or her house from the vantage of a satellite. A constant note taker, Kilday offers colorful details on life inside the Googleplex (turf wars, pool and dart games, and walk-ons by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, etc.), where the Keyhole team realized only gradually that "Google was launching a moonshot mapping effort to transform how we find our way in the world." In recounting the effort, he describes the technology's role in saving lives during Hurricane Katrina and in the advent of self-driving cars, and he offers accessible descriptions of satellite imagery and the operation of Google's hundreds of Street View vehicles. Writing with warmth and humor, the author has great fun recalling life as a state-college alum working among intense Stanford graduates.Informative, entertaining reading for nontechies.

Kirkus Reviews