Vice President, Product Management, Geo

John has spent the last several years working with his colleagues at Google to create innovative products to store, organize, and visualize information about the Earth. John began his business career in 1995 when he discovered that his business school classmate was starting a company to create a new kind of online computer game. John joined the effort and a small company was formed which went on to launch one of the world’s first graphical, massively-multiplayer online games. The company was acquired by 3DO in 1996 just as John and Steve were graduating from business school. John spent two years working in Product Management at 3DO before leaving to co-found another startup, this type in the area of “casual” online games. That company, Big Network, was acquired in 2000. John’s next venture came about after he met a group of former software executives from Silicon Graphics and Disney. Together they founded Keyhole and created the a whole new kind of digital earth. John served as CEO and his team survived many ups and downs during the collapse of the .com bubble, emerging to be acquired by Google in 2004.

The team went on to create Google Earth (an application that has now been downloaded by more than 700 million users) and John came to lead the “Geo” effort at Google which grew to include a number of technologies and products including Earth, Maps, Places, Ocean, Street View, Sketchup, and Panoramio to name a few. Very recently John has started a new mobile application startup lab for Google in San Francisco. He now spends most of his time on this venture where small teams are exploring the convergence of mobile, geo, and social. John received his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1996 and has a BA in Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin.