When I first joined Microsoft in 1990, I was given a postcard of our corporate campus. The company had been in that location for about four years and had just over 5000 employees. I’ve scanned the photo and included it below on the left. For a comparison, I have included the Live Maps 3D view of the site today. The maps view is even a little old since there’s building 37 on the right side now (the dirt construction in the maps view.) (BTW, I used DeepZoomPix to display these photos; this is a new technology from Microsoft’s Live Labs. You can drag the photos below around and zoom pretty deeply into them.)
You can see the how we have more buildings and fewer soccer fields, big trees, etc. It’s also interesting how much the trees around the parking lots and driveways have grown. Of course, there are many many more buildings on campus now that aren’t in view. The area behind campus had a lot more trees before; it’s all houses today.
[Updated 4/18/2009 to point to the new DeepZoomPix (formerly PhotoZoom) location]
Clint Jorgenson Reply
In the photo you scanned, you can see the trees to the east of the Msft buildings toward Lake Sammamish. I used to live on the lake and go water skiing in the morning then mountain biking behind building #5 in the evening. The good old day's.
Tony Reply
Unfortunately, DeepZoomPix is now dead. Oh well.