Google Earth: a heavenly eye on Mother Earth

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: In June 2005, Google launched its Google Earth tool, powered by Keyhole Technology from Keyhole, a company that Google acquired last year. The very first impression of Google Earth was sheer excitement. By combining satellite images, an intuitive video game like interface, powerful graphics, ASP model, video-streaming and 3-D capability of today’s desktop/laptop computers (powered by powerful microprocessors like Intel Pentium), high resolution display, large RAM and disk, and a broadband connection, Google Earth offers an amazing service that would delight anyone (from kids in kindergarten to grandfathers).

What does Google Earth offer today? By installing a small component (11.2 MB) on your Windows XP PC (the current version runs only on powerful Windows machines and not on Apple Macs or Linux desktop machines), you get an intuitive and simple-to-use tool on your desktop. Launching it will give you the option to ‘fly to’ a place; type out an address (typically an address in the US, as most of the data is available in sufficient detail only for the US, though Google claims they have detailed data for Canada, Western Europe and UK, too). You will be ‘transported’ to that place.

The ‘interface’ has a special appeal. I typed the address of the apartment I used to live in three decades ago as a PhD student in the US and saw the ‘earth’ coming up, the cursor ‘flying over’ the Earth and landing on the address. The streets, buildings, the wider roads, the river, the laboratories, libraries, stadia, and schools showed up vividly and the excitement was hard to contain!

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