John Hanke

Director, Google Earth & Google Maps, Google, Inc

John Hanke

Were you one of the few people familiar with web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) before the breakthrough release of Google Maps in early 2005? If you weren't, then you probably know the challenges of mastering GIS technology as it rapidly evolves. As one of the most popular web services to emerge from the Web 2.0 boom, developing Geoweb-based applications remains a moving target. Since 2001, John Hanke has been leading that evolution, first as CEO of Keyhole and later after their purchase, at Google.

John Hanke’s believes that geography and maps provide a useful context for understanding information and making decisions. That belief fuels his vision of a massive Geoweb of geographically aware web content. With a growth of 300% increase in geographically tagged data on the web since last year, it appears as if Hanke's vision is rapidly emerging.

In this talk from the 2008 O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference, Hanke lists the places where this growth is happening. He also discusses what Google is doing to address the challenges of drowning in data and identifies the need for an open standard markup language for displaying geographical data on the web.

For Hanke, the biggest challenge to further evolve the Geoweb is how to make the billions of dollars of real-time GIS data available to developers. To help solve this challenge, Google reached out to ESRI, the world leader in GIS mapping technology. Jack Dangermond, founder and CEO of ESRI, joins Hanke to jointly describe the work Google and ESRI have been doing together. Dangermond explains how the 9.3 release of ESRI’s software will allow developers to pull data from GIS servers and combine that data with other information on the Geoweb. This new partnership furthers Hanke's vision, and will lead to a whole new kind of user-generated content and an exciting future for web-based map making.


John Hanke oversees development and integration of the Google Maps and Google Earth products and services. He joined Google in October 2004 as part of the acquisition of Keyhole, a 3D mapping technology company that developed an “earth browser”, which he co-founded in 2001. At Google, the Keyhole technology became Google Earth in July 2005. Prior to Keyhole, John co-founded Big Network, designed to pursue casual gaming online. Big Network was acquired by eUniverse in 2000. Earlier, he was involved in the startup of one of the first massively multiplayer games online, Meridian 59, which was acquired by 3DO in 1996. Before his work in technology began, John worked in foreign affairs for the U.S. government in Washington D.C. and Southeast Asia. John earned a BA in Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley.

Resources:

 

This free podcast is from our Where Conference series.

For The Conversations Network: