Netflix’s The Billion Dollar Code is an upcoming mini-series based on true events that take the fans back to the 90s, to the beginnings of the digital world. Directed by Henner Besuch, the series is inspired by the true story of the Winklevoss brothers, who would be the creators of the algorithm behind Google Earth.The mini-series features Lavinia Wilson, Mark Waschke, Mišel Matičević, Leonard Scheicher, Seumas F. Sargent, and Marius Ahrendt in the pivotal roles.Two guys in Berlin in the early 1990s.The Billion Dollar Code Season 1 Download
One of them is an art student with big ideas, the other a computer nerd.After meeting in 1993 in a techno club, they developed together the idea of creating a kind of global work of art that would allow people to travel to any point in the world, simply by zooming into a location with a click of the mouse.They quickly realized that computers in the early 1990s weren’t performant enough for their project.But that could change, especially with the help of a telecommunications giant and experienced hackers on board: They were sponsored by Deutsche Telekom, and developers were members of the Chaos Computer Club.Despite a chaotic process, the two partners managed to have their “Terra Vision” project ready for a presentation at an international communications fair in Kyoto, Japan, in 1994. It was a resounding success.But during a trip to Silicon Valley, the source code for “Terra Vision” fell into the wrong hands — and in 2005 Google, by then a tech giant, suddenly released Google Earth.The two developers from Germany felt that Google had stolen their idea — leading to a David vs. Goliath court case.The Netflix miniseries tells in two timelines and four parts how two computer freaks developed their idea, convinced a large corporation and finally the whole world of its interest — only to be robbed of their fame and fortune by a tech giant’s legal ruse.With this German production, Netflix demonstrates once again that the setting of a story is not what matters most, but rather what it is about. The two developers could just as well have been from Japan or South Africa instead of Germany; the core of their tale is universal.