In October 2004 Google, which had just gone public, purchased Keyhole for about $35 million in stock. In one meeting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and other executives, Brin began using Keyhole to zoom in on the backyards of the people in the room while advocating for the acquisition of the startup. That technology caught the eye of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who was infatuated with maps. (They sold the company on the day of their B-school graduation.)Īfter starting and selling another gaming firm in 2000, Hanke cofounded Keyhole, a geospatial software firm that provided users with satellite imagery of any locale on Earth. Not long after arriving there, he joined a classmate's startup, Archetype Interactive, whose only title, Meridian 59, is considered the first 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game. A self-described 'hick from the sticks,' Hanke graduated from the University of Texas, Austin and eventually wound up at Haas Business School at University of California, Berkeley with a view to starting a gaming company. Hanke has long loved videogames, having taught himself to code his own on his Atari 400 computer in Cross Plains, Tex., a town of 1,000 with a single stoplight. Beyond the numbers, Hillary Clinton has invoked the game on the campaign trail, Justin Bieber has gone Poké-hunting in Central Park, and a reporter was publicly chided for playing it at a State Department briefing. alone (the game is available in 37 countries). One in ten Americans plays Pokémon GO daily, according to App Annie, and SurveyMonkey estimates that the game is hauling in as much as $6 million a day from in-app purchases in the U.S. Apple said the game had more downloads in its first week than any other app in history. Since its July launch Pokémon GO, a free 'augmented reality' game by Niantic Labs in which players capture virtual characters mapped to real-world locations, has piled up superlatives. 'They're playing,' says the 49-year-old, nodding at a couple holding hands while their eyes fixate on their phones. They have a peculiar way of carrying their devices in front of them with one hand, says John Hanke, the technology whiz behind Pokémon GO, as we stroll along the waterfront of San Diego's Seaport Village the day before his appearance in front of 7,000 fans at Comic-Con. It's not hard to spot players of the most popular smartphone game of all time.

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