Never Lost Again

The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality

By: Bill Kilday

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 10 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

As enlightening as The Facebook Effect, Elon Musk, and Chaos Monkeys - the compelling, behind-the-scenes story of the creation of one of the most essential applications ever devised, and the rag-tag team that built it and changed how we navigate the world.

Never Lost Again chronicles the evolution of mapping technology - the "overnight success 20 years in the making." Bill Kilday takes us behind the scenes of the tech’s development, and introduces to the team that gave us not only Google Maps but Google Earth, and most recently, Pokémon Go.

He takes us back to the beginning to Keyhole - a cash-strapped startup mapping company started by a small-town Texas boy named John Hanke, that nearly folded when the tech bubble burst. While a contract with the CIA kept them afloat, the company’s big break came with the first invasion of Iraq; CNN used their technology to cover the war and made it famous. Then Google came on the scene, buying the company and relaunching the software as Google Maps and Google Earth. Eventually, Hanke’s original company was spun back out of Google, and is now responsible for Pokémon Go and the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

Kilday, the marketing director for Keyhole and Google Maps, was there from the earliest days, and offers a personal look behind the scenes at the tech and the minds developing it. But this book isn’t only a look back at the past; it is also a glimpse of what’s to come. Kilday reveals how emerging map-based technologies, including virtual reality and driverless cars, are going to upend our lives once again.

Never Lost Again shows us how our worldview changed dramatically as a result of vision, imagination, and implementation. It’s a crazy story. And it all started with a really good map.

©2018 William Kilday (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

How did Google Maps happen?

Great telling of one man's perspective of the history of Google Maps from a great demo to an amazing product!
if you love tech history stories, this is a must listen!

Fabulous!

Great story, which might help you realize that what we consider today's norm is actually groundbreaking innovation made just yesterday.

great story told by the insider.

if you want to know how Google maps and Google Earth were made, read it.

Great history of important tech

Great look inside what it takes to bring transformative tech to market. Also a fun walk down memory lane through the phases of technology in the last 30 years.

Fascinating

Interesting history of Google maps and Google earth. Excellent narrator and I would highly recommend

Humble mapmakers

What a great story of modern map makers with great ideas and performances. Thanks for creating Google Maps.

Just read it

This was an easy read that offered an insight into something that we use everyday.

Startup roller-coaster, Google acqui-hired, repeat

This is a great insider-case study on the startup[s] acquired by Google for their Earth and Maps apps, and beyond. The author was "just a marketing guy" who initially resisted following his childhood/college buddy into startup land, but eventually gave in; and ended up having enough influence and clout to make his perspective in recounting the events quite valuable, even if he lacks technical depth.

The story recounts the roller-coaster highs and near-deaths of their startup before [and after] the Google acqui-hire. After finally burning out from ~10 years of helping to transform Google from just a search engine, to the location-aware data-behemoth open-market enabler of billions in market-cap it is now, the main characters of the story hit success again with their current company, which developed the Pokemon Go app. I expect to hear more about this story in the near future.

Sharp story and delivery.

A WOW Book Which Could Have Used a Better Title

The book traces the detailed history of a lucky Silicon Valley start-up (and even that would have been a better title) from famine to feast (a better subtitle). The book was better than fiction. Its main focus was far broader than just the history behind Google's mapping technology. It was gripping on a human level, too, in that the 'feast' is not always a guaranteed 'heaven on earth' when success means less job satisfaction and petty politics and small-minded office obstructionists. I'm glad I gave the book a chance, it was better (on several levels, especially the human level) than the past dozen or so tech books that I listened to. I did wonder what the stories would have been from the other people in the start-up that Google bought out for their mapping technology - obviously they would all have offered their unique perspectives, and from the petty, egotistical office obstructionists within Google.

On the highest philosophical level, however, the book fails miserably. It just further confirmed my observation that the human race is still universally clueless, even as it technologically advances blindly into the future, in this case substituting the drive for money (during the famine days) or the drive to create beneficial products for mankind or to save the planet (the feast days) for an adequate life-guiding philosophy (such drives are not - enter the Philosophy of Broader Survival) - meaning such drives all good as fuels for life, as temporary tanks of motivation, but they are no guidance system for life at the broadest level. So the book made me realize that I have work to do in getting the word out into the world - so consider this a grassroots effort).

Loved it!

Great story with a strong beginning, middle and end structure. Great reminder of how different the world was before Google maps. A real inspiration to create something that will change the world. Focus on product and moreso user experience.