It seems that @Last Software and Keyhole, the original developers of SketchUp and Google Earth respectively, have more in common than being acquired by Google. Both received venture capital funding from In-Q-Tel, the not-for-profit VC arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
In-Q-Tel is one of the CIA’s least secretive operations. It operates a web site, publishes the list of companies in which it has invested, and is actively looking to review business plans for new investments. It seeks to invest in firms in knowledge management, security and privacy, search and discovery, distributed data collection, and geospatial information services. It is this last category that led In-Q-Tel to invest in both Keyhole and @Last.
In-Q-Tel’s mission is to focus “on next-generation technologies for gathering, analyzing, managing and disseminating data.” Sound familiar? Compare it with the Google mission statement: “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
(Thanks to Adena Schulzberg of All Points Blog and the team at SlashGeo for the tip.)
--RSN