I’ve been considering writing some new posts (just a few now and then) about what’s been going on with further development of Google Earth applications (for mobile, the web, desktop, and VR), and for the rich Google-developed dataset that continues to grow at an amazing pace. Would there be any reader interest in that? If so, please leave comments below in this post if you would like new posts. Also, on an administrative note, I’ve changed the blog over from Google’s Feedburner – which is being retired from active support. I’m using Follow.it as an RSS service because they offer the e-mail sub ..read more

Yesterday Google released a new version of Google Earth Pro (for the Desktop version of Google Earth – not mobile) version 7.3.2. I’ve copied the highlights from their announcement post at the Google Earth and Maps forum down below. The new version addresses a number of issues with different platforms and features, but the most significant news is that Google has finally addressed a long-needed feature for manipulating places content in the sidebar. This has probably been the most frequently wanted feature by power users of Google Earth since it was first released. Yes, Google has finally impl ..read more

A year ago, Google held a fancy venue in a New York museum to announce the next grand release of Google Earth. A complete re-write of the underlying application which finally unified the Google Maps (more current) mapping data with a formerly independent (and aging not-updated) dataset used by Google Earth on the desktop for years. The good news is that the application ran surprisingly well in Chrome and on Android (as mentioned in my review). The bad news, for a lot of veteran fans of Google Earth on the desktop, was that most of the tools most valued (measuring tools, content creation tools ..read more

Last night Google released a new version of the desktop version of Google Earth Pro version 7.3.1 (which is free despite the confusing “Pro” name). You can download this at the download page found here: www.google.com/earth/desktop/ This new version 7.3.1 represents some significant work by Google to add “bug fixes, performance and feature improvements, and security upgrades.” – as seen in the announcement post in the Google Earth help forum here. I am showing the full release notes below, but I want  to explain some things about this version to those of you who might be confused about th ..read more

Although this blog has stopped regular blog postings, Google Earth still has a legacy of amazing stories and content. This post summarizes some of the most popular content found by our readers during the year of 2017. The top 5 most popular posts (from any year) on Google Earth Blog during 2017: Secret Mars Base Found in Google Maps/Mars – Google’s April Fools joke for 2017. Google Earth Live – proving that a lot of people think Google Earth has live imagery. This 2012 blog post still is a top find in searches. Read this for why Google Earth imagery isn’t live. How often is Google Earth image ..read more

We recently came across a site called “Thomas Pesquet in Google Earth”. It features a KML file that includes over 625 photographs of Earth form the International Space Station (ISS) by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet that were shared through social media. The site and KML were created by Jean-Daniel Cesaro who has painstakingly geolocated them and put them in placemarks in Google Earth. The photos range from relatively close up shots to sweeping vistas and night time photos. The site is in French, but the KML file is easy to find, so head on over there and download it. Houston Texas. The Soy ..read more

Yesterday we showed you a video created by satellite imaging company Planet of the launch of their most recent flock of Doves using a series of images they had captured from orbit. As we mentioned in that post, it was almost certainly a first for satellite imaging. After writing that post we were having a look around various Spaceports (also known as Cosmodromes) and came across this sight: Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on December 4th, 2010 We can see a rocket on the launch pad with vapour streaming off it as if it has just been fuelled and the support structure ..read more

A couple of weeks ago, satellite imaging company Planet launched a flock of 48 ‘Doves’, their low cost imaging satellites. They managed to capture imagery of the launch from one of the Doves already in orbit: Read more about it on the Planet blog. As far as we know, this is a satellite imaging first. The key to the achievement was already having a large number of satellites in orbit which enabled them to task a suitable satellite to capture the launch. Even so, they had to tilt it in order to get the shots. Google Earth features many planes in flight in its imagery. Simply look through histor ..read more

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