According to Dave Troy, Google seems to be using the Geohash algorithm:
Google is employing the GeoHash algorithm I’ve been pushing to do spatial searching using BigTable. Since database schemes like BigTable don’t support traditional GIS extensions/spatial indexes, GeoHash allows for a simple bounding box search using truncated GeoHash substrings. I will post separately about this shortly, as I am working on some GeoHash tools to expand this functionality. This is of particular interest to AppEngine developers.
Nice!
Wow, this blew my mind — don’t you think it’s fantastic when people use something you built in a way you never foresaw?
Congratulations!
Awesome. Must be really exciting to see that Google and xkcd are using/talking about something you invented.
Congratulations!
Best Regards
Leandro Lameiro
http://lameiro.wordpress.com/
Congratulations!!
Awesome! Well done
Awesome! Congrats!
Gustavo,
Your alg. is refreshingly elegant. I was interested in Locapoint, but that one is licensed commercialy. I’m hoping it becomes a defacto URL standard for places.
Taylor