Google Earth: A Mind Blowing Invention

Looking back to the time when I first got to know Google Earth. With a desire to explore the planet, I set out on a global journey by rotating a 3D virtual globe to view high-resolution satellite images. It was mind-blowing as I realized how Google Earth allows users to move across the geographical boundaries between different regions of the world with a swipe of their fingers on the screen. In 2016, Google Earth has exceeded my expectation again with a story of a five-year-old boy who found his way home by searching through Google Earth for three years. With an insight into the functions of Google Earth used while searching for his lost family, I came to the realization that Google Earth is not just a geographical information program. Instead, it is an invention that could change the world.

A LONG WAY HOME WITH GOOGLE EARTH

In 1986, five-year-old Saroo Brierley woke up on a moving train after getting lost with his brother in a train station in India. Not knowing the name of his family and the place he was from, Saroo managed to survive on the streets of Kolkata for six months, before being taken to a juvenile home and adopted by an Australian couple. Despite living in a family surrounded by love and happiness, a flood of hazy memories sometimes crossed his mind, bringing back his childhood in India. Everyday, he would venture around the village, sneaking in a local cinema to avoid the afternoon heat and stopping off at the rive bank on the way home. “Even though I was with people I trusted, my new family, I still wanted to know how my family is: Will I ever see them again? Is my brother still alive? Can I see my mother’s face once again?” Saroo recalled. With the constant flashbacks of his early childhood, in 2009, Saroo decided to set of a journey to find his lost home and family. Sitting in front of his laptop with a massive Google Earth satellite imagery of India, a country of 1.2 billion people and thousands of train stations, a question popped into his head: Where to start?

First, he worked out a search radius by calculating roughly how far he traveled the night he was lost. A few regions were eliminated from a radius of one thousand kilometers based on his vague memories. Day after day for three years, he pored over the satellite images of the country to find familiar landmarks. Until one day, March 31, 2011, Saroo came across a bridge next to a large industrial tank by a train station. Miraculously, he realized that is the place he had always being looking for.

The search radius. Image by [Google Earth]