Have a look at the Google Earth VR stuff .. certainly dipping their toe down at the 3D cm range ..
Given Google's previous investments in fleet of cars etc for street view .. a fleet of planes is not beyond them.
But can aerial imagery create leverage for their search engines? I can't immediately see where it would assist search (ie where the money comes from in the first place). Street View was good for intelligence - reading signs .. collecting wifi access point locations .. latest cars even have emissions testing gear on them .. but moving to planes seems a bit of a leap. Not sure it would even really help their mapping intelligence - thinking car navigation here.
Moving outside the box .. can they have airborne gigabit-speeds solar powered high altitude planes? Probably more likely .. would you fit cameras too these while you were at it?
This was codenamed Titan .. but they canned it.
How 'bout mounting cameras to a delivery drone fleet? Maybe air taxi fleet? Oh they need cameras to fly anyway? Who would have thought.Hoovering up this data and processing it to near real-time 3D mapping is not a big leap at all.
Still many years away one would think.
