FYI this was submitted 6 hours earlier here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6850

I noticed that too after I submitted. But when you click on their link it doesn't go to the techcrunch article.

Sebastian Thrun is a rockstar in the AI world. He's the guy that won the DARPA Grand Challenge. I got to see him speak at a conference last year. It only strikes me odd that he would found a company doing non-AI stuff.

Ah, maybe this is his first step towards a self-driven car revolution: to drive autonomously through cities, it's helpful to have a map. And a 3-d immersive map is better than a 2-d one.