Google buys satellite imaging company Skybox for $500 million

Really cool news about a recent acquisition by Google . Skybox provides high-resolution photography from space and its imagery -- if made widely accessible -- could facilitate many new spatial-analytic studies going forward as daily time steps appear feasible with the Skybox satellite network.

From the company website is this advertisement for their startup origins: "2009, Founders wrote the first Skybox business plan as part of a Stanford graduate entrepreneurship course, Spent 6 months working out of John's living room, Secured Series A financing of $3M from Khosla Ventures, Moved into a windowless 3,000 sqft office in Palo Alto, Began to attract, court, and hire the smartest people they knew to join the vision..."