Google Center of the USA on a Mac, Kansas

Searching for the United States of America in Google Maps or Google Earth on a computer running Mac-based software once rendered a map of the USA that was centered on a point at the southern edge of a small pond on a farm, north of Dearing, Kansas. This is apparently because Dan Webb, the Google engineer who worked on the coding, grew up on this farm, and selected it as the default site. He did so in response to what a colleague, Brian McClendon, who coded the original PC-based Keyhole mapping software that was bought by Google, did, which was to center his software on the Meadowbrook Apartments in Lawrence, Kansas, where he lived for a time. In a further nod to the Mac-based software, downtown Chanute, Kansas, near Webb’s home, has a large Google Earth globe painted on the intersection of Main Street and Lincoln Street.