View Earth Without Google Earth?

Very few people thought that Google Map mashups would flood the Internet since its release three years ago. Online maps have always been helpful in finding places of interest.

Google Earth has given a new view of this world. People can fly around anywhere they like and discover new places. Inclusion of 3D models have bought reality in the application.

Yesterday, Google announced the release of  their new Google Earth Browser Plug-in. It means that now you can use Google Earth in your browser.

This plug-in can easily be embedded in any website. As it is driven by JavaScript API, it allows you to control camera; create lines, markers, etc.

It also allows you to import 3D models from the web. You can overlay these models anywhere in the planet. If you want your content to be overlaid at different places including planets, stars & galaxies (using sky mode), you can easily do it. It lets you build 3D Google Sky mashups.

If you want to enable a 3D building, all you need is a single line of JavaScript. There are plenty of other things you can do like attaching JavaScript callbacks to mouse events, fetching KML data from the web and a lot more.

“Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you’ll build the next great geo-based 3D application, and change how we view the world”

Google Earth Browser Plug-in is available for download.

This new plug-in seems nice but there is always room for improvement. As the application is heavy, the plug-in requires a lot of space just to load the initial view (around 100 MB). This will certainly affect the end-user. If they improve their memory storage, the plug-in will prove to be a huge success.

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