: How Google has mapped whole earth?
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They buy data from companies and assemble some themselves, but in short:
1) Satellites take photos. A satellite flying north-south will cover pole to pole, and the earth will rotate east-west below giving you full (somewhat low Res) coverage.
2) Software and humans stitch together photos – if there’s clouds you can use a different days photos for that spot.
3) high quality aerial footage taken from planes (as well as street footage for street view) is used in more populated areas of interest – compare a zoomed in view of rural North Korea to New York and you’ll see how much higher quality the latter is.
Some competitors, like Planet, take updated photos everyday – but Google just buys often quite old coverage.
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