Happy 10th anniversary Google Earth

Google Earth 10th anniversary

Maybe when launching Google Earth you may have found a message abouth its 10th anniversaty. Indeed, last June 29, 2014 Google Earth celebrated its 10th anniversary. In order to celebrate its first decade Google Earth added two new features: Voyager and Earth View.

Image 1. Google Earth 10th anniversary message

Voyager

Voyager shows the most recent imagery and data available. Voyager is divided in 4 categories: Street view highlights, 3D cities, Satellite - aerial imagery and highlight tour. The highlight tour flies around the planet highlighting samples from each of the new features.

Earth View

Although Earth View was already available, this new Earth View has been updated and now it offers 1500 new landscape images that allow us looking at the planet from above. Earth View shows landscapes from around the world as seen from space. The new landscapes are accessed through the Web gallery or using a Chrome extension.

The following video shows some features of the new layers and the tour.

Video 1. Google Earth Voyager tour

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the celebration of this 10 anniversary began some months ago (January 2015) when Google Earth Pro became free. Until 2014 Google Earth Pro was available at 399 Us$ per year. Some of the most important features from GEP are the possibility to measure areas, 3D features and saving images.

The future

In a recent interview, Sean Askay (the new lead engineer overseeing future work on Google Earth) and Rebecca Moore (Google Earth Outreach manager) made some interesting comments about future plans for Google Earth which indicate a lot of thinking about leveraging the vast array of data Google has developed to create even more dynamic databases for new versions of Google Earth. Besides, there were some hints at uses of VR and AI technologies.

References & Further information
New Content for Google Earth’s 10th Anniversary
Google Earth Tenth Anniversary Brought New Features and Top Improvements