A Fresh Look for Google Earth
By Patrik Blohmé, Product Manager, Google Earth
For nearly two decades, Google Earth has empowered people to explore the world from different perspectives. By harnessing satellite imagery and geospatial data, people can plan work, respond to change, organize, share, and visualize information. To improve these workflows and expand Earth’s capabilities, today we’re updating Google Earth to help make geospatial work and collaboration across teams and devices easier.
Eighteen years ago, Google Earth pioneered easy sharing of geospatial data through the introduction of KML files. While KML will continue to be an important part of Google Earth and our commitment to interoperability and open standards, today many workflows have migrated to the cloud, enabling universal access and rich processing capabilities.
This version of Google Earth comes with a project model that integrates with Google Drive, facilitating a simpler sharing experience reminiscent of Google Docs, but tailored for geospatial data. Additionally, a new user interface makes it easier and faster to create and organize geospatial data seamlessly across web and mobile devices. For the first time, users will also be able to create maps on mobile and tablet, and use their device’s mobile camera to capture and share images taken on site.
As we adapt to a world grappling with the growing challenges of climate change, accessible tools like Google Earth with global satellite imagery catalogs and comprehensive geospatial data are becoming vital resources in the fight to understand and mitigate environmental impacts.
This update will start rolling out on Android, iOS and earth.google.com over the next few weeks.
Learn more on google.com/earth/about.
