In a book review for the New York Journal of Books, Rob Atkinson outlines author Bill Kilday’s story of how the online mapping revolution came about and how a brash young startup company came up with an amazing technology to let anyone see virtually any part of the planet through their EarthViewer software. This company, Keyhole, ended up being bought by another young company: Google.
Rob writes that Kilday, an early hire of Keyhole and its marketing director, is a compelling writer; the book is a fascinating play-by-play story not only of how Keyhole developed and built their mapping innovation but also how by becoming part of Google they were able to scale and expand its functionality by orders of magnitude more than they could envision when they first started. In this sense, Kilday’s story illuminates broader lessons that are easy to overlook when we think about high-tech startups.
The book is a first-class business story, detailing the trials and tribulations of getting a tech startup off the ground and then the inside story of working at Google, particularly when it was still a relatively young company.
Read the review.
