Perhaps this is only an instance of our tendency to see faces everywhere. But nonetheless, located at coordinates 50° 0’36.67″N 110° 6’51.38″W in the mountains of Alberta, Canada is a geological formation which arguably bears strong resemblance to a Mayan chieftain. One wonders how he feels about recent oil drilling in the area:
How to find the giant profile head on Google Earth. Share this with anyone and everyone who also seeks weirdness.
Via the Guardian, Oliver Burkeman on Google and Apple’s quests to map the world in ever greater detail, and how our maps’ creators shape how we engage with the world:
[Almost a decade ago], Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had been fascinated by the zooming satellite imagery used by US news networks to report on bombing raids in Iraq. Those terrain graphics were provided by Keyhole, Inc, a software company that the CIA had helped to fund. Unlike the rest of us, Page and Brin had the wherewithal to act upon their fascination: they bought Keyhole, repackaging and releasing the firm’s software as Google Earth in 2005.
“They say they bought it because it looked cool,” says Brotton. “But my view is that they absolutely knew what they were buying. They marketed it in this touchy-feely way, as an environmental thing, and they called it ‘Earth’ – ‘Google World’ would have sounded imperialist.
