Let me expand, so that those that would downvote a post like this will have something else to read :-)
When we bought Keyhole, we were able to bring a serious amount of datacenter and network resources to the problem of serving tiles, make the consumer client free for use and offer web interfaces to the same. I think that was non-trivial and quite innovative.
That Michael Jones and the Keyholers were able to take advantage of that expertise speaks to their remarkable ability as well. (I really like when I get the chance to work with MTJ, he's brilliant)
So while the team at keyhole were themselves hugely innovative, the combined work of google + keyhole was amazing, more so than either group could have done on their own.
To say that a Google or a microsoft can only be innovative if you only count those people who are hired specifically and only though one mechanism and at one time if seems unrealistic . It doesn't recognize that a company is the combined knowledge of the past work in the space, the employees experience gained at university and previous employers, and through knowledge and employees gained via acquisitions.
(this is not to say that all acquisitions work out, either)
Really good point. It's really of little interest to me whether Google acquired good things or developed them in-house from the start. What I like about Google is that their stuff is good. Unlike many companies, they are doing good work with their acquisitions.
When we bought Keyhole, we were able to bring a serious amount of datacenter and network resources to the problem of serving tiles, make the consumer client free for use and offer web interfaces to the same. I think that was non-trivial and quite innovative.
That Michael Jones and the Keyholers were able to take advantage of that expertise speaks to their remarkable ability as well. (I really like when I get the chance to work with MTJ, he's brilliant)
So while the team at keyhole were themselves hugely innovative, the combined work of google + keyhole was amazing, more so than either group could have done on their own.
To say that a Google or a microsoft can only be innovative if you only count those people who are hired specifically and only though one mechanism and at one time if seems unrealistic . It doesn't recognize that a company is the combined knowledge of the past work in the space, the employees experience gained at university and previous employers, and through knowledge and employees gained via acquisitions.
(this is not to say that all acquisitions work out, either)