In April 2002, Google hosted the "Google Programming Contest" with a $10,000 cash prize. The winning entry, by Daniel Egnor, was titled Geographic Search:

Daniel's project adds the ability to search for web pages within a particular geographic locale to traditional keyword searching. Daniel's system provides an interface that allows the user to augment a keyword search with the ability to restrict matches to within a certain radius of a specified address

The contest rules had a clause that Google, Inc. would be granted full rights to use the technology used in the entries submitted.

About a year later, Google Labs launches the new Search by Location feature, a direct implementation of Daniel's work. And it's pretty cool too.