June 29th, 2005 | 2 Comments
Playing with Google Earth
I’ve had a little bit of a chance to play around with Google Earth, Google’s recently released interactive desktop globe, and I have to say that I’m impressed. There may just be a certain amount of novelty value at the moment, but I just love the way you can drag it around, throw it with your mouse and watch it roll like a real globe would, and see where it lands. Then, zoom in and take a look at the land and buildings. The speed at which you can move from your local surroundings to somewhere a few thousand miles away really does make the world seem like a very small space.
In some ways I guess it takes away from the romance of undiscovered places - they are but a mouse-click away. But let’s face it, this sort of technology is not exactly new, it’s been on the horizon for a while but only now has it been released to a mass audience because of who is now owns the software.
At the basic level, Google Earth is a globe made up of satellite images (currently the best resolution is only available on the major cities on the major continents, but hopefully they are working on getting full coverage worldwide). This in itself is interesting enough, but where it will really come into its own is with the layers that you can apply over the top of the images - you can easily add on airports, golf courses, whatever really, although again the coverage for this at the moment is somewhat sketchy. Click “3D buildings” and you can tilt the map to show you the relative heights of New York’s skyscrapers. Most of the terrain is already in 3D - I’ve just been looking at the peaks I’ve skied in the Alps. Perhaps one day we will be able to see the whole world in 3D without leaving your room.
The basic version is currently free, and there are two other upgraded versions, available at cost, which include greater functionality, but I wonder whether there are other ways in which Google can gain revenue from this, such as charging businesses for inclusion (if they’re populating the information from their search engine, which they must be, this may already be the case).
As mentioned before, this technology is not particularly new, but Google Earth is the first to do this with such a slick interface. Whether it will prove to outlive the novelty factor and be truly useful, I’m unsure - regular updates to the images and ensuring that those of us who do not live in capital cities are not left behind would be a good start to making it a must-use application. It’s integration with Google Local / Google Maps will certainly be interesting.
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