Newsweek on VE 3D

Newsweek takes a look at the technology and stories behind it. Good tidbits:

Really? Download VE?:

Both Google Earth and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth are hugely popular and have been downloaded more than 100 million times each.

Tech behind VE 3D:

During the late ‘90s boom, Vexcel had a side business making 3-D re-creations of urban areas for telecom firms that needed to know precisely where to position their line-of-sight antennas. Vexcel’s trick: using data from its cameras, which track precisely when and where each aerial photo is snapped. The firm’s software then combines the photos, accounting for overlapping features in each picture to generate a 3-D image…

Vexcel acquisition almost didn’t happen:

The acquisition almost didn’t happen. Vexcel CEO John Curlander, a former researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was nervous that Microsoft was buying the software and would lay off many of his 135 employees. He asked for a personal meeting with Gates, and was charmed and impressed by the Microsoft founder’s commitment to the 3-D vision. “That’s the one thing Microsoft does have—star power,” Curlander says. Microsoft didn’t disclose what it paid for Vexcel, but analysts say it was north of $50 million.

Another company in VE 3D:

It has also hired Minnesota-based Facet Technology to drive city streets and take millions of high-resolution photographs of stores, homes and street signs. Sometime in the near future, Microsoft will begin blending those street-level images into Virtual Earth 3D.

Conclusion (based on Google’s newly added historical maps, that is David Rumsey’s):

In other words, while Microsoft is stretching out in the third dimension, Google is leaping ahead into the fourth (time). Pay attention to this high-tech mapping race—it promises to take us all in some remarkable directions.