| Fate | Acquired |
|---|---|
| Successor | |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Defunct | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Key people | John Hanke, CEO |
Keyhole, Inc., founded in 2001, was a pioneering software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications and was acquired by Google in 2004. Initially launched as a spin-off of Intrinsic Graphics, first round funding came from a Sony venture capital fund and others, additional capital came from an NVIDIA bundling deal, from the CIA (via its venture-capital appendage, In-Q-Tel) and from angel investor Brian McClendon (who later came on as a board member and VP). Keyhole's marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the highly successful Google Earth application in 2005; other aspects of core technology survive in Google Maps, Google Mobile and the Keyhole Markup Language.
The name "Keyhole" is also a homage to the KH reconnaissance satellites, the original eye-in-the-sky military reconnaissance system now some 30 years old.
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Near the time of its acquisition by Google, Keyhole's management team included the following people:
The board also included:
The Geological Society of America (GSA) Past President Jean Bahr awarded GSA's prestigious President's Medal for 2010 to the founders of Keyhole, Inc., developers of Earth Viewer, which evolved into Google Earth.
Keyhole Inc. founders include John Hanke, Chikai Ohazama, Mark Aubin, Phil Keslin, and Avi Bar-Zeev. Advisory founders include Brian McClendon, Michael Jones, Chris Tanner, and Rémi Arnaud.
Keyhole got a big boost during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when CNN, ABC, CBS & other major news networks used sophisticated 3D flyby imagery from its EarthViewer product line, to the delight of viewers and investors alike. "One of the problems (Keyhole) faced as a small company was getting exposure," said NVIDIA's Dan Vivoli. "This will certainly help."[1]
Keyhole boasted an active customer base in several sectors, including real estate, media, urban planning, state and federal governments, defense, homeland security, and intel, but at the time of its acquisition its only named customers were US Army CECOM, the United States Department of Defense, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and the Middlesex County Sheriff's Office.