Noel Gordon

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

How could we survive today without Google Maps? The application has transformed our lives, from helping us to find our way, to creating a platform from which thousands of businesses operate and thrive. It has revolutionised the way we see the world and interact with it.

The Google Maps story started in Noel Gordon’s Sydney apartment in 2003. Gordon was born in Bellingen, NSW, in 1962. He pursued a career in technology but found himself a victim of the dotcom bubble burst in the late 1990s.

In 2003, he joined forces with three other unemployed software engineers, Australian Stephen Ma and Danish brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen. Their small start-up company was named ‘Where 2’ and their office was Gordon’s spare room. Their first prototype was called ‘Expedition’. The group’s aim was to speed up online maps and make them more user-friendly.

By August 2004, Google had bought ‘Expedition’ and the four men became Google staff. Their fortunes had now completely reversed. Google Maps was launched in 2005 and the transformation of our relationship with geography began. With smart phones becoming ubiquitous, Google Maps enabled a massive amount of information to be carried around in one’s pocket: all that was needed was an internet connection.

Today, printed street directories have been sidelined and, instead, we have instant digital information about services, directions and street views for virtually any place on earth. It has changed our everyday lives and also enabled extraordinary stories.

Without Google Maps, the story of Tasmanian-raised Saroo Brierley and his quest to find his Indian family, which inspired the book Long Way Home and the 2016 film Lion, could never have happened. Noel Gordon’s brainchild has had far-reaching and unexpected consequences in connecting people and places.