Never Lost Again chronicles the evolution of mapping technology—the “overnight success twenty years in the making.” Bill Kilday takes us behind the scenes of the tech’s development and introduces to the team that gave us not only Google Maps but Google Earth and most recently, Pokémon GO.

He takes us back to the beginning to Keyhole—a cash-strapped start-up mapping company started by a small-town Texas boy named John Hanke, that nearly folded when the tech bubble burst. While a contract with the CIA kept them afloat, the company’s big break came with the first invasion of Iraq; CNN used their technology to cover the war and made it famous. Then Google came on the scene, buying the company and relaunching the software as Google Maps and Google Earth. Eventually, Hanke’s original company was spun back out of Google and is now responsible for Pokémon GO.

Kilday, the marketing director for Keyhole and Google Maps, was there from the earliest days and offers a personal look behind the scenes at the tech and the minds developing it. But this book isn’t only a look back at the past; it is also a glimpse of what’s to come. Kilday reveals how emerging technologies including virtual reality and driverless cars are going to upend our lives once again.

Never Lost Again is a tech insider’s look at how our worldview changed dramatically as a result of vision, imagination and implementation. It’s a crazy story. And it all started with a really good map.

Bill Kilday served as Marketing Director for Keyhole, the Mountain View, California, based startup that was bought by Google in 2004 and turned into Google Earth in June of 2005. Kilday was Head of Marketing for Google’s Geo division for three years and participated in the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005. Kilday continues to work for John Hanke, now as Vice President of Marketing for the Google spinout company Niantic, the game development studio behind the mobile gaming success “Pokemon GO.” He lives in Austin, Texas.