Google the Entire Earth

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows

Google the Entire Earth

by David Chartier Jun 29th 2005

Yet another beta service Google's launched in the last couple of days is Google Earth - a 3D interface to the planet that is like Google Maps on steriods. (It's temporarily "taking a breather" due to overwhelming interest.) Google Earth is an application you can download with Free, Plus and Pro versions offering a fantastic array of features. Honestly I'm blown away. This is one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of software I've played with in years. If you think I'm nutty, (or even if you don't) please read on.

Google Earth allows you to look at the entire planet in medium-high resolution goodness, complete with 3D rotation and attitude control - whether you're 20 feet or 2000 miles off the ground. You can toggle features such as true 3D buildings (38 US cities for now) and terrain, and a "Layers" option can show a plethora of notable locations such as major retail outlets, churches, volcanoes and even golf courses. Driving directions? Don't even get me started. Find out more after the jump.

Sure, you can enter your route, place your own annotations and see every step of the way in 3D grandeur that rivals even their own Maps. But the sweet part is that you can hit a "Play" button and get a 100% fly-through of the entire route. Drool.

Images, maps and routes are printable, but if you want anything better than a standard screenshot you have to upgrade to Plus or Pro. Plus offers GPS device support, better printing and drawing tools, while Pro brings presentation and collaboration features for professional and commercial uses.

Presently Google Earth is only available for Windows, although their site says a Mac version is coming. Lastly, as of this writing the service is still "taking a breather", but I'm sure it'll be back up soon.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jordan Running said 11:48PM on 6-29-2005

Google seems to have taken the download page offline, replacing it with a message that says, "Thanks for your interest in Google Earth, but we're sorry we can't offer you a download right now. As you know, Google Earth is in beta, and we're still building out our ability to take on new users." The Google cache of the page still works and the download is still available, but after I installed it it wouldn't connect to the server. Perhaps they're overloaded?

Sam Kim said 12:36AM on 6-30-2005

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere... The Google Earth app has a web browser capability built in - and it's not Firefox. It uses Internet Explorer. Technically, I think this is the launch of Google's first web browser. This was much anticipated, but no one noticed.

Sauce1985 said 3:21AM on 6-30-2005

Not gonna lie, the addition of Smoots as a measurement was a stroke of genius. The story behind it was worth taking the time to find out WTF a smoot was.

I <3 Geeks!

OrkO said 5:36AM on 6-30-2005

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ is better

Richard said 6:57AM on 6-30-2005

Re #2. Microsoft make it very easy to embed and control the rendering portion of IE (not all the browsing functionality) into other applications and this is what Google has done.

The reason they have used IE is because there is no current way to do this with Firefox.

Jordan Running said 10:13AM on 6-30-2005

Richard, you're mistaken. You can use the Gecko SDK to embed Gecko (the rendering engine used by Mozilla, Firefox, and Camino) in any application. Read about it on the Embedding Mozilla page.

John said 10:46AM on 6-30-2005

I managed to download the 10 Mb installer application but it doesn't do anything. I double click on it and nothing happens.

As for the Smoots, I covered those 364 smoots + one ear (if I remember correctly) many times.

R-Bro said 3:54PM on 6-30-2005

The linked download is for Google Plus, which I believe requires an account. Perhaps that's why it won't connect? Man, I am really eager to check this out, too.

Randy said 3:48PM on 7-01-2005

I wonder how this will stack up to Virtual Earth (http://www.virtualearth.com)

Neil Sabharwal said 4:32PM on 7-04-2005

you cant download google earth no more but i got it off bittorrent

davinder said 4:31AM on 12-22-2005

i want to download google

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