38:Google Earth, in turn, was based on an idea from some old science-fiction novel

Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel, Snow Crash, featured the service "Earth". One of Google's co-founders claims this was the inspiration for Google Earth.

Excerpt from Snow Crash
''A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm's length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth.''