"I’ve decided not to sue Google."
By
Doug Wall
Copyright 2011
I’ve decided not to sue Google, even if their “Street View” looks an awful lot like my “DrivingDownPeachtree.com” in 2002. Driving Down Peachtree was a visual (with timed still pictures) of sections of Peachtree Street as if you were driving south.
The menu selections were different sections of Peachtree, from outside the perimeter highway; pass Lenox, Buckhead, Midtown, Downtown to the end of Peachtree at the Atlanta jail. From that menu you got a list of streets; From Lenox to Piedmont, from Piedmont to West Paces Ferry, etc. When you selected the street names a slideshow of still pictures of the traffic conditions on Peachtree Street at the time the picture was taken. Pictures were taken approximately every five seconds at about thirty miles per hour. They were scrolled in the slideshow one picture every second. You could see a car far away in one picture and see that same car close to you in the next.
Of course their technology is better and their scope is bigger. I concentrated on Peachtree Street, they show the world. I thought locally, Google thinks globally. I like to see if my ideas can come to life, Google likes to see it’s ideas come to life, even if they buy the idea after it is breathing. And they make money, I wish I were better at making money.
What I would like, however, instead of a law suit, would be the recognition that some googler (If that is what they call their employees) was doing research one day and came across drivingdoenpeachtree.com and said. “What an interesting idea. I wonder if we (Google) could do something with it. I wonder if the pictures can be video.”
And look what they have done. I show only one view on drivingdownpeachtree, forward; while Street View shows 360 degrees, and allows 360 degree navigation, but for 2002, one view wasn’t so bad. They had a fleet of vans with expensive cameras, and staff. I had an old Cadillac, a 3.8 digital camera, and a staff of me. They had a budget higher than my lifetime income, I had sweat equity. They actually had advertisers, I did not.
I hope that today that employee is a multi-millionaire, and would like to offer me a grant as a researcher, thinker, builder, or gold buddy.
I’m not complaining, I’ve got other ideas.
An Android app is slowly taking form, and my web-sites are staying updated. I have diner for my wife when she gets home, and she is mostly happy
The end
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