McClendon is the visionary creator of what became Google Earth and later, Google Maps and Google Street View. Brian McClendon is a 1986 KU engineering graduate, who founded Keyhole, Inc, a startup company that developed a web-based maps product called Keyhole and a language called KML - Keyhole Markup Language.

Google Maps was started as downloadable map with a name - Expedition by a company called where 2 technologies at Sydney, which later became Google Maps after its acquisition by Google in October 2004.