For the third issue of the Google Librarian Newsletter, Google Earth team member and Keyhole co-founder Mark Aubin pens an article, Google Earth: From Space to Your Face…and Beyond, about the origins of Google Earth and how its imagery is collected.

Mark reveals that the inspiration behind Google Earth was…. the Charles and Ray Eames flip book Powers of Ten.

So now we have Keyhole co-founder John Hanke claiming the inspiration was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Google Earth CTO Michael Jones claiming the inspiration was the tricorder, and Mark Aubin claiming it was Powers of Ten. Get your stories straight, guys:-) (Via Aviran’s Place)

[BTW, here is a cool poster intended for librarians on using Google Search. Did you know that using a tilde (~) in front of a search term in Google will have Google search for all synonyms as well? I had no idea.]