terravision google earth lawsuit who won

Terravision google earth lawsuit who won code#
Terravision google earth lawsuit who won series#

As Schlüter deadpans in voice-over: “Two German hackers taking on an American success story. In their suit against Google, the older Schlüter and Müller (now a professor and gardener, respectively) are a pair of underfunded, uncredentialed Davids up against the ultimate Silicon Valley Goliath, and they know it. This lays the seeds for the betrayal that will derail Juri and Carsten’s business plan, not to mention their lives.

Terravision google earth lawsuit who won code#

Naïve Juri sees in Andersson a fellow tech idealist, and unthinkingly shares with him all the details of his code for Terravision.

Terravision google earth lawsuit who won series#

It’s here that the two Germans first meet one Brian Andersson (Lukas Loughran), the programmer who comes on like a bohemian teddy bear, but who takes on an increasingly Mephistophelean air as the series progresses. (A potent symbol of the history this generation seeks to cast off its shoulders.) But it’s when they visit the offices of Deutsche Telekom in search of funding that The Billion Dollar Code unveils its most memorable locale: a grandiose, beautiful-ugly hall that could not be more evocative of the Cold War era. Once they stumble into becoming entrepreneurs with their plan for Terravision, they set up shop just off the Ku’damm, with the bomb-scarred Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church looming just outside. The space is presumably a former site of the Wall, now unclaimed territory where anything can happen. True Berliners, the young Carsten and Juri are fond of brainstorming at a doner kebab stand in the middle of an urban wasteland. The viewer can’t help asking, what has happened to these two former friends and their glorious ‘90s ideals?įrom no-man’s-land to land of opportunity

Schlüter and Müller both seem shell-shocked by the passage of time, and moreover it comes out they’re no longer on speaking terms. The mood is tense, the lighting evokes a police interrogation out of vintage film noir, and anytime the opposing counsel opens his mouth the room suddenly becomes a shark tank. (Their computer-nerd bona fides are also assured by their terrible haircuts, and how oblivious they are about same.)īut in a parallel timeline, circa 2017, a middle-aged Schlüter (Mark Waschke) and Müller (Mišel Matičević) give separate depositions in a law firm’s conference room. Almost puppy-like in their eagerness, the two bond over a shared dream of an Internet that dissolves borders and conflicts. The two complement each other, for Müller is a part-time hacker whose programming talents far exceed his social skills.

In early ‘90s Berlin, the young Carsten Schlüter (Leonard Scheicher), an art student of visionary ambition but few resources, partners with the young Juri Müller (Marius Ahrendt) to create the global 3D mapping program Terravision. The first episode presents the audience with an intriguing question. The show makes the case into an enthralling, if sobering courtroom drama, and also a kind of parable, using parallel timelines to contrast the utopian dreams of the ‘90s with the disillusionment surrounding ‘Big Tech’ today. Based on a true story, the Netflix miniseries The Billion Dollar Code recounts how two German developers sued Google for patent infringement, arguing that Google Earth blatantly appropriated their own Terravision program from the 1990s.