(www.sfgate.com)
He uploaded the photo to a stock photo agency he helped co-found, and then two years later his stock photo agency was acquired by another stock photo agency that was regularly used by Microsoft. Microsoft found O’Rear’s hill shot, paid an undisclosed-but-exorbitant sum for all rights to it in perpetuity (reportedly in the low six figures) and then proceeded to make it Windows XP’s default desktop wallpaper.
That wallpaper was also ultimately a central figure in an extraordinary $1 billion marketing campaign for the operating system.
More than 400 million copies of Windows XP were sold in its first five years, and the operating system wasn't retired until 2014, meaning more than a billion people have very likely seen O’Rear’s photo without ever realizing it was from the Bay Area.
A great and cool interview about a piece of tech history.
SFGate's Grant Marek found the exact Bay Area hill that was Windows XP's default wallpaper plus talked to the man who took the photo to boot.