How one founder’s bet on ‘the old school web’ is paying off
Craig Campbell, a former Meta engineer, chose to create a website called Past Maps instead of pursuing opportunities in the AI sector. His platform allows users to explore historical maps overlaid on modern maps, catering to a variety of interests from genealogy to metal detection. Since its launch, Past Maps has seen significant growth, attracting over 300,000 active users per month.
- ▪Craig Campbell walked away from potential AI investments to start a website.
- ▪Past Maps allows users to view historical maps overlaid on modern maps.
- ▪The site has grown from 20,000 to over 300,000 active users monthly.
The Verge files mainly under tech. We currently carry 584 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The Verge |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theverge.com/tech/938245/past-maps-website-google-zero-ai |
| Publication time | 2026-05-30T09:00:00-04:00 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-30T13:04:37.979Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-30T13:04:37.979Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | -BXYCA8I_RSc |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIWebCloseWebPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All WebHow one founder’s bet on ‘the old school web’ is paying offIn 2022, Craig Campbell walked away from a ‘blank check’ to start, of all things, a website. And his bet is paying off.In 2022, Craig Campbell walked away from a ‘blank check’ to start, of all things, a website.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Verge.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from The Verge
