@World Wide Telescope

OK, so you've made the point, exactly. Terraserver predated Google Earth. So how did ms innovate? They didn't, they bought someone else's work, as usual. They bought SkyServer, more work by the same guy. Again, how did ms 'innovate' in any of this? Business as usual for that bunch, if you can't buy it, then steal it or copy someone else's model.

The only "innovative' things they ever did were to convince the majority of the computing public that crashes and daily failures are "normal operations"; and to expose the majority of of the computing public to umpty-jillion varieties of malware. Now THERE's a record to be proud of.