You're so absolutely and completely wrong that you're probably trolling, but:

Google implemented vector maps on Android long before Apple introduced their own maps (i.e. ~years). Likewise, 3D buildings have been available through Earth for years, and rendering them in Maps was an obvious next step. Ultimately, both Apple and Google launched 3D at right around the same time.

Last, as a sibling poster pointed out, if you think all of this was started in reaction to MapBox's work (earliest public mention I found was April 1st) and completed less than 3 months later, then that's just fucking admirable execution right there. But alas, that probably wasn't copied either.

Now that you say it, you're totally right about the vector maps thing.

I don't think it's impossible cloudless aerials were inspired by MapBox though... I think you and your sibling overestimate how hard it is to chop up and process imagery with a cluster of computers.

The new base map imagery was preceded by the Timelapse release last month, which used basically the same techniques on historical data. See: <http://world.time.com/timelapse/> and <http://earthengine.google.org/>. It ought to be pretty clear that both of these have been in the works for a long time.

If you seriously believe that _any_ mapping provider (including Microsoft, Nokia, or Google) hasn't been actively removing clouds from their imagery for a very, very long time, then you haven't been paying attention. No one needed MapBox to give them the idea of removing the giant patches of white obscuring everything in view.

In any case, your willingness to comment on a subject that you obviously know little about -- and then extrapolate your wrongness into a statement about the industry -- is impressive. Every sentence of your original post is wrong.

Well, I can definitely understand why you would make your remarks anonymously. I still don't think I'm uninformed to suggest this is not a coincidence, despite you berating me.

I was chatting with my colleague at work today, who actually stood up our landsat servers and does all of our tiling work, and he thinks that the pixel-averaging technique to de-cloud the images was an innovation that was pretty unique to MapBox. According to this article, they noticed a guy doing it in February 2013, and hired him right away to do it for them: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas/.

MapBox got to market with it in just a few months, and it's a particularly absurd argument to say this was too hard for Google's hundreds of maps engineers to implement. I heard at the State of the Map conference that it was just a few guys working on it at MapBox. Given Google already has the imagery, and the processing pipeline, I think adopting this declouding technique was actually a piece of cake.

Also, while Google has been removing clouds from their images for a long time, I think their technique has been to pick the best of many images. Their imagery used to have many more clouds in it, until all of a sudden.

The language and examples in the blog post above seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from posts by MapBox below. Regardless of whether or Google was working on it in advance or not - it's a feature I imagine you can't afford but not copy. Giving some attribution to the concept or at least a shout out to MapBox for pulling this off seems at least warranted.

http://www.mapbox.com/blog/cloudless-atlas-with-landsat/ http://www.mapbox.com/blog/huge-mapbox-satellite-update/

MapBox announcement seems to be not more than a couple of months old. If you think that someone can take inspiration, get data, process, QA test and launch such a feature in such a short duration, you should be impressed anyway.

Google Earth had 3D for a long time. Vector maps is again a huge undertaking and takes time to get right. Some companies didn't take their time, some did.

I have no idea how to sort by date in Flickr' idiotic new design but Charlie Loyd (vruba) has been posting images about the project for >8 months, probably talking about it even longer.

But they didn't make Google Earth. They bought it from a small company that was partially funded by the CIA.

So was the case with Apple, if my sibling is correct. I am just trying to say is that there is plenty, like a lot lot, of innovation in Google Maps - from devices that make it's own mapping data to using WebGL to render it in 3D in browser. To claim otherwise, with incredibly weak argument as in the original comments, is either lazy or dishonest.

I don't think you can credit Apple for the technology to make 3D photography, it has been a very well established technique for quite some time. Apple just happend to buy a company that did exactly this.

Probably. The main guys who created Google Maps are long gone.