Pretty much. Basically the "show internet actions via the globe" has a pretty rich history. There was even an animated and projected globe in the lobby of the IBM research facility in San Jose.
Still, given that the "form" is well established, it is always interesting to me at least to see how they chose to represent the data. When Blekko was running Bryn Dole had done a visualization based on this theme were query requests were highlighted as streams from their point of origin (more queries, taller stream as I recall).
Good design ideas are always 'stolen'. As long as it's not exactly the same clone then it's fine. Github's is different enough and looks cool so I don't mind the similarity. And as others have commented there is plenty of other examples in the past of global activity maps.
This seems to be a blatant ripoff* with no attribution, and since the opening line is the arrogant "GitHub is where the world builds software", I'm not cutting them any slack.
I'm also not forgetting Microsoft's checkered history with open source, or their current deals with government agencies like ICE and the DoD.
* I'm not saying they didn't build it themselves. For companies like Microsoft/GitHub, the design is the hard part and paying engineers is easy.
You’re grasping at a lot of straws here. Showing your business on a globe is pretty old idea. Stripe “ripped off” someone too. Shopify was doing this for cyber monday many years ago.
I also don’t think the ICE and DoD deals are relevant here at all (or to any of Microsofts’s other products)
That's why I said it seems to be a blatant ripoff. I don't know the whole story but I see a similar blog post (but with a lot of corporate self-agrandizment) about a similar design and disagree with the take that I replied to.