Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/When out-of-work coder Jens Rasmussen couldn’t find directions to a cafe in Copenhagen, he wound up changing navigation forever. Alongside his brother Lars (also an out-of-work coder), Jens developed a radical vision—not just for a faster map, but a vibrant, multi-dimensional platform to help plan your entire life. With maxed-out credit cards, these Danish brothers built a prototype that caught Google co-founder Larry Page's eye—but faced HUGE technical issues to get it over the line. From CIA-funded satellites, to a ""Mad Max"" desert race, the road to Google Maps was a journey in itself that created an $11 billion revenue generator powering everything from Uber to Airbnb. Discover why you should never correct your customers when they make a wrong turn, the power of an SNL name check, and why Google Maps is the best idea yet.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet for the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — and the bold risk takers who made them go viral.Episodes drop every Tuesday, listen here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/—-----------------------------------------------------GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: How did Google Maps change navigation?
Yetis, Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy Studio. Right now, you're probably stuck in traffic or on a tarmac just trying to get home. Memorial Day, fun three-day weekend with two days of travel. So to keep you company as you're trying to get home, we're dropping an entire episode of our other show, The Best Idea Yet.
Now, ironically, this one is about Google Maps, the very thing that says your ETA is still two and a half hours. Two and a half hours in this episode, we'll go deep on how Google Maps was created and scaled into something used by billions of people every day. And how two Danish brothers wildly changed a map from a two-dimensional piece of paper to an entire economy.
So after this, make a U-turn and go subscribe to The Best Idea Yet. We put a link in the episode description. You're going to love it. But in the meantime, Jack, let's hit the show. Jack, would you say that the world breaks down into two types of people? Those who have a sense of direction and those who simply do not. Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.
Although anyone who comes out of the subway in the Lower East Side of Manhattan doesn't have a sense of direction. There's no grid. There's no numbers. It's just chaos down there. It's a vortex. But in general, we all have that buddy Timmy who knows exactly where their car is parked and then the other buddy who thinks Southwest is just an airline. Yeah. Geographic literacy, if you will. Right.
But Jack, I discovered that there is also a behavioral element here on your sense of direction based on where you grew up. Is that so? It is so, Jack. If you grew up in a urban situation versus a rural one. So if you grew up in like a farm environment, you have a better sense of direction. Kind of like your upbringing, man. Okay. Because we grabbed onto landmarks as a way to orient ourselves. Yeah.
Yeah, like, you know, meet me by that tall hill by the oak tree across from the sunset pond kind of a thing. Meanwhile, I, like, grew up in a city, so, like, if I had to meet someone on 5th Avenue and 14th Street, as long as I could count numbers, I was going to be fine. Right.
But yet is, whether you are geographically literate or not, especially, though, if you are not, you're going to need a good map. And today we are talking about the single most popular map of all time. Nick, you're talking about a product that ushered in a new era for humanity, one where you will never get lost again, unless your phone dies.
Simply put, without this product, Google wouldn't be nearly the company it is today. And so many of the apps we rely on, like Uber, Airbnb, Strava, and others, they wouldn't even exist. This invention, it lets you zoom out and view Earth from orbit, or
zoom in and find your nearest coffee shop, and then gives you step-by-step directions on how to get there, see the menu, read the customer reviews, show you the vibe with a virtual tour, and even tell you how long you're going to have to wait for that mocha cookie crumb frappuccino. We're talking about Google Maps. More than 2 billion people use Google Maps every month.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the creation of Google Maps?
and snap together instantly when you start scrolling. It means creating a seamless, scrollable map in real time. That's part one of the idea. And you know what? This idea, it sounds promising, but Jens isn't finished yet because now he's on to part two of his new idea for a better digital map. The Tiles idea is a leap in the technology of how to deliver digital maps.
But Jens also has a conceptual leap that even us liberal arts majors can appreciate, an entirely new way of thinking about digital maps. In fact, his idea is an entirely new way to think about how people can use the internet to go about their daily lives. He asked Lars to imagine planning a trip to the movies.
But instead of searching just for the theater's address, you search the map for the movie you want to see. And then the map would show you where you can see it, the show times you can watch it, and even let you buy the tickets with a few clicks, again, directly in the map.
He basically wants to take the two-dimensional static map from something you just read into a multi-dimensional canvas that you can truly interact with. Like it's a digital concierge that helps you plan your business trips, plan your night out, plan the coffee shop you're going to stop at on the way to the train station. Basically plan out your entire life through the map.
And what does Lars think, Jack? He's sold. Oh, yeah. Partly because this is a truly special idea. And partly because he's picturing a day when his idea of fine dining isn't mixing together two flavors of instant ramen. As for Jens, well, he's ready to move out of his mom's place, despite the hearty Danish home cooking.
So Jens and Lars decide to go all in and bet their future on a whole new way of thinking about maps. They call their new project Expedition. Yens and Lars are both ace coders, but pretty quickly they hit a hurdle, a four-letter hurdle, HTML. What a buzzkill. The key reason why existing map websites are so painfully slow is what they're made out of. They run on HTML.
The thing is, HTML wasn't designed for interactive experiences. HTML was originally built for a super simple function, text. Like a blog post. It is not what you would use to build a map of planet Earth. So using HTML to build a seamless, scrollable, dynamic map is kind of like trying to build a life-size Chrysler building out of Jenga blocks.
It's technically possible, but the foundations will be so shaky, even Tom Cruise wouldn't dare climb it. Oh, he wouldn't go near it, Jack. And that's why the digital maps of the 2000s era feel so stiff and slow. They're really web pages first and maps second.
So Jens and Lars, and their other buddies from this ragtag team, Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, decide the way around the limitations of HTML and the web is ditch them all together. Instead of running Expedition in a web browser, they decide to make it a standalone program that users download and install. They've got their concept, an interactive map that's much more than just a map.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Jens and Lars face while developing their map?
Now, it's time to build a prototype. And they immediately hit another wall. This time, it's not a tech problem. It's a money problem. Yeah, so it turns out map data costs a fortune. Like the kind of fine detailed street level mapping data that Jens and Lars need. It's owned by just a handful of companies with names like Navtech and Tela Atlas.
And these companies, they want a whopping 100 grand a month just for the data on California. Jens and Lars obviously don't have that kind of cash. They barely have enough kroner for meatballs and the occasional Friday night Carlsberg. But they don't give up.
They managed to sweet-talk a contact at one of these mapping companies into giving them the data of just a few blocks of Berkeley, California. Look, it's not much, but it is just enough to build a prototype. So they spend the next 18 months working around the clock on this single square-shaped map of downtown Berkeley. Yens cashes in on his pension, they max out their credit cards, the meatballs.
These things are on pause till Christmas. Eventually, they land a pitch meeting with Sequoia, which, in our opinion, is the most prolific and certainly one of the biggest venture capital firms on Earth. If venture capital were a world map, then these guys are Pangea. They were early investors in most of the big tech successes since Apple. So this is a huge opportunity. And the pitch?
It goes smoothly. Our Danish bros, they are vibing. But sadly, Sequoia passes on the deal. Sequoia only invests if all of its partners are in agreement together. And in this case, there is one single holdout who just doesn't see a future in Expedition. But after the meeting, something unexpected Yens and Lars are handing in their lanyards at the Sequoia front desk.
But as they turn to leave, one of the Sequoia investors dashes out and grabs Yens by the arm. And he says, hey, I see something in your expedition idea. Now, he can't fund them individually, but this guy knows someone who just might be able to. A guy by the name of Larry. A guy who co-founded one of the fund's portfolio companies. A company that goes by the name Google. Google.
Today, Google is a $2 trillion conglomerate, known by its corporate name, Alphabet. But let's sprinkle on some context about where Google was when it was just six years old. You're talking about the year 2004. Yes, I am, Jack. Google has gone from two guys in a garage in Menlo Park, California, to the most popular search engine on the planet.
But at this point, Google is mainly just that, a search engine. There's no Gmail, no Google Docs, no Android. But Google has figured out what no one else has figured out before, how to make internet search into a profit puppy.
They're actually pulling in $1.6 billion in revenue at this time thanks to Google AdWords, their innovative pay-per-click advertising system that Google launched back in 2000. It's the early 2000s, so if you search for shoes, you might see ads for Ugg boots, and every time you do, it means more advertising dollars going to Google.
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Chapter 4: How did Google acquire Expedition?
Jens whips open his laptop and shows off their software's smooth panning, thanks to those tiles. And then Lars shows Larry something that really grabs his attention. Lars types in the word theaters, and then a bunch of dots appear on the map. Lars then clicks on one of those dots, and boom, up pops a list of movie showtimes. There's Shrek 2, The Incredibles, Garfield, the movie.
Hell of a triple feature. To Larry, this is the answer he's been looking for. If Google had a map just like this, people looking for directions wouldn't click away to a competitor. They could stay in the Google ecosystem. Plus, to top it off, they could charge businesses to get featured placement on the map.
But one thing, Larry thinks for this to work, the map can't be a separate program that people download. It needs to be a web page so that people can click straight through from Google search results. So just as Jens and Lars think they've got the deal in the bag, Larry asks them a question they haven't prepared for. Can you make this run in a web browser?
Jens musters all his Danish matter-of-factness and replies, Yeah, no problem. Jack, I gotta ask, is this actually no problem? Actually, Nick, he has no idea whether this is even possible. Oh, boy. But honestly, that's not important right now. What is important is that Jens and Lars have the deal of a lifetime right before their eyes.
If they can make Expedition work on a web browser, Google will buy their startup. However, if they can't, they're both going to be fighting over who has top bunk when they move back in with their mom.
Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be a big flop? From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi. It's kind of like when you give yourself your own nickname and you try to, like, get other people to do it.
and the 2019 movie adaptation of Cats.
Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie.
Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.
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Chapter 5: What was the impact of Google Maps on the tech industry?
Chapter 6: What is the revenue generated by Google Maps?
Chapter 7: What are the features of Google Maps that changed user experience?
Chapter 8: How did Jens and Lars's backgrounds influence their innovation?
He's got a PhD in computer science. While Jens, he's more of a tear up the book kind of thinker. Creative, brilliant programmer. He's a pessimist who dropped out of college, but he also channels his pessimism into finding solutions to problems.
So when Lars in California gets a collect call from Jens, he's happy to accept the charges because he knows if Jens is making an effort to call, he's probably found a massive problem and more importantly, a brilliant idea for how to fix it. Jens just goes off on how crappy MapQuest is. I mean, he's just shredding this software. Do you remember MapQuest, by the way?
I just remember printing MapQuest from my printer. Yeah, we would like have a youth hockey game on Long Island and my dad would have 12 sheets of paper printed out just to get us off the LIE. But back to our two brothers here. Jens hits Lars with the solution. It's a solution that actually comes in two parts. The first part is tiles. Not the kind you have in your bathroom.
We're talking digital tiles, each containing the image of part of a map. Jens thinks tiles are the solution to making an online map service that's way faster than MapQuest. Now, yetis, you may not remember MapQuest, even though technically it is still around. But back in the early 2000s, this was by far the biggest online map service.
But it did share the same problem as its competitors at the time. You type in your starting point and your destination, and that request was then sent to a server, which then drew a new static map image. And then they would send this back to your computer browser, along with a long list of text-based directions. Pretty basic, but also pretty complicated. Also pretty slow. Yeah.
It's like the Flintstones version of a Polaroid camera. Yeah, I don't see this scaling, Jack. I don't see it scaling. Drawing the map each and every time like this is slow. And when it loads onto your computer screen, you can't scroll around. If you want to see one block east, you need to wait for the entire map to get redrawn and then sent to your computer again.
But remember, our guy Jens, he's a solutions dude, and he's got an idea. He wants to pre-draw the maps in small, manageable pieces called tiles. Think of it like a giant digital jigsaw puzzle, but only the pieces you need get sent to you. Now, you don't have to wait for the server to painstakingly draw a new one. Instead, the different pieces are sent to you in the background
and snap together instantly when you start scrolling. It means creating a seamless, scrollable map in real time. That's part one of the idea. And you know what? This idea, it sounds promising, but Jens isn't finished yet because now he's on to part two of his new idea for a better digital map. The Tiles idea is a leap in the technology of how to deliver digital maps.
But Jens also has a conceptual leap that even us liberal arts majors can appreciate, an entirely new way of thinking about digital maps. In fact, his idea is an entirely new way to think about how people can use the internet to go about their daily lives. He asked Lars to imagine planning a trip to the movies.
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