Film & television locations
Doc’s house from Back to the Future, Happy Days, the steps from The Exorcist and locations associated with The Godfather.
Personal archive / Mapping & technology
Keyhole EarthViewer.
Before Google Earth.
Years of beta testing, bug reports and virtual exploration. A personal recollection by Guillaume Louyot, starting when the software was still known as Keyhole EarthViewer.
This page preserves an earlier chapter of the Onickz website. It is an independent personal archive, not a current software guide or an official Google resource.
01 / Personal recollections
Testing a new way to see the world.
I spent years beta testing the software that became Google Earth, beginning in the Keyhole era. My involvement included tracking bugs and sharing feedback while the software was being refined.
What drew me in was the freedom to explore: moving from a view of the planet to a city, recognising a landmark, then following a detail somewhere unexpected. Satellite imagery and aerial photography turned the atlas into something I could navigate.
This corner of my website grew out of that curiosity. The original page introduced EarthViewer, mentioned my testing work and outlined a collection of places to discover.
02 / From the original page
A globe full of small discoveries.
The old page organised its proposed collection of screenshots and ETA location files around these themes. This archive keeps that outline; the original downloads are not available here.
Landmarks & cities
The Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the Great Mosque in Baghdad.
Patterns & curiosities
Mazes, oversized messages, signs and unusual shapes visible from above.
Transport & movement
Airports, aircraft, road traffic, ships, submarines and yachts.
Sport & theme parks
Stadiums, Disney World, Legoland California and Universal parks.
Nature & unexpected details
Coastlines, sea life and the tiny details that made an ordinary stretch of imagery worth another look.
03 / Historical context
From Keyhole to Google.
EarthViewer was developed by Keyhole, a company founded in 2001. Google announced its acquisition of Keyhole on 27 October 2004; the technology became the foundation of Google Earth.
There was a connection to the US intelligence community: In-Q-Tel, an organisation funded by the CIA, invested in Keyhole in February 2003 and announced the investment that June. This was an investment in an existing company, rather than evidence that EarthViewer was a programme created by the CIA.
These historical facts concern the software’s development and ownership. My recollections above describe my own beta-testing experience.