Google Maps Gets New Satellite, Can Zoom In On Your Face

Google Maps has gotten a hardware upgrade — not server side, but space side: GeoEye-1 is Google’s new satellite capable of capturing color images at 1.65 meters (able to read license plates).
The scale will be toned down for consumers (50-centimeter resolution), but it’s still a huge upgrade in image quality.
Google is sharing the satellite with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a national security organization.