Google Earth
Google Earth – The World At Your Fingertips
Getting to see, and learn, more about this world has never been made so interesting since Google Earth first made its appearance on our maps back in 2004 when Google acquired it from Keyhole Inc. the company who created this fascination product, originally known as EarthViewer 3D. Google Earth is basically a virtual globe, map and geographic information program that maps our world out by way of superimposition of images. These images were obtained from aerial photography, satellite imagery and GIS 3D globe. When Google first introduced this product to us it was available under three different licenses. The first was a free version that had limited functionality named Google Earth. The second included additional features and was known as Google Earth Plus, which has since been discontinued, and the third was Google Earth Pro which was used for commercial purposes and cost $400 per year. However, in 2005 Google Earth was re-released however and is still available for use by users on their personal computer. On May 28, 2008, Google Earth was made available as a browser plugin and on October 27 of the same year as a free download from the App Store for the iPhone OS.
We can say for certain that when Google Earth was first introduced to us in June 2005 it caught the public’s attention, causing more than a tenfold increase in media coverage of virtual globes between 2005 and 2006. This concluded to be the driving force behind the public’s interest in geospatial technologies and applications as this product allowed us to see our world from a bird’s eye view, things like cities and houses. The fun thing was that it allowed users to search for addresses, enter coordinates, or they could merely use the mouse to browse through a specific location, and believe us we all did have a look to see exactly what was shown of our own city or suburb, but mostly if we were able to see our own homes while playing around on this product. The resolution at which the satellite images are available varies, depending on the points of interest or popularity. At most the degree of resolution was covered in at least 15 meters of resolution while Melbourne in Australia, Las Vegas in Nevada, USA, and Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, England, were of the highest resolution at 15 cm (6 inches).
We can say for certain that when Google Earth was first introduced to us in June 2005 it caught the public’s attention, causing more than a tenfold increase in media coverage of virtual globes between 2005 and 2006.
— J. Nortje (Marketing Director)
While large parts of the surfaces on Google Earth are only 2D images, creating the feeling of objects that are horizontally to seem father away and smaller, like that of a large photograph, Google has been updating the images so that many terrains and buildings could be viewed as 3D images instead by using digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). This means that for the first you can view images of places such as Mount Everest in three dimensions. What’s more is that Google allows people to use the applications, made available through various sources like the Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), to add their own data using SketchUp, a 3D modelling program. As Google kept on developing this program the number of cities and towns who are shown entirely in 3D has grown quite rapidly and on January 16, 2008, when the Irish town of Westport was added, it was done so by the 3D imaging creating firm AM3TD who made use of long-distance laser scanning technology and digital photography, making it the first city to be modelled like such with the highest resolution photo-realistic textures to be found on anywhere in Google Earth.
There are also quite a number of features made available to the users of Google Earth, one of which allows users to monitor traffic speeds in real-time at loops located every 200 yards. On April 15, 2008, Google Street View was implemented, which shows an on street level view of many locations. Furthermore the ocean floor imagery was updated to contain new images by SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA and GEBCO on January 17, 2009, and on October 21, 2009, the whole of Poland’s territory imagery was updated too. With the release of version 5.0 Google Earth has now been available in 37 languages that includes English (Britian and American), Dutch, Spanish (Latin America and Spain), Thai, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Hebrew, Greek, Danish, Polish, and so forth.
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