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Will's Web Watch: Life on Google Earth
Why it's Google's greatest achievement to date...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Monday 06 November 2006

Who would have thought maps could be so much fun?

I've always been fascinated by travel and able to lose myself in maps and the potential they promise but Google Earth really is a fascinating journey in its own right.

If you aren't one of the 150 million people who have downloaded it already and taken a spin around the globe, or zoomed in on famous locations - or your own house - then do so. (Or see for yourself what you can find in our photo story, showing some of the weird and wonderful sights found on Google Earth.)

The greatest detail is in the highly populated areas of the world and in particular the US, where much of the country is available in alarming detail.

Take the example of a man captured as he was about to open his car door in a Las Vegas suburban back street (pic here). Captured from miles overhead you can almost see the hairs on his arms. Or what about the unmistakable orange boiler suits of prisoners in the exercise yard of San Quentin prison in California. Or closer to home, the unfortunate woman, captured sunbathing in the Netherlands who enjoyed some unwelcome publicity earlier this year.

And then there is the application's ability to open up areas of the world we would never see.

In April this year I drove from San Francisco, across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas, past China Lake and along the Extraterrestrial Highway.

But for some high fencing, and a rather alarming mushroom cloud rising high into the sky some miles off, there were few indications I was driving past some of the US' most infamous and secretive military bases. But with Google Earth you can see right inside the most secretive of them all: Nellis Airforce Base and the Groom Lake facility known as Area 51 – the centre of many alien conspiracy theories.

(Alien conspiracy theorists may be heartened to see on Google Earth that crop circles are alive and well and to be found in the North East of England.)

Aerial photography of areas such as Groom Lake was once strictly off limits but the unstoppable tide of Google's advance in this area appears to have forced change.

Other areas, once or still taboo to prying Western eyes - such as parts of China and North Korea - have also been opened up by Google's eye in the sky.

And while I find this level of spying - for want of a less sensational word - fascinating, Google Earth has also given us fresh perspective on more everyday images.

Natural sites such as the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley in Arizona, or Uluru in Australia, viewed from above and seen as part of the bigger picture which Google Earth affords, take on a whole new lease of life.

Other sights that are breathtaking include the view from space Google can provide of the Great Barrier Reef. It's a far more compelling piece of evidence than Google's capturing of the Great Wall of China which is hard to imagine is also supposed to be visible from space.

But simply making all this information and imaging available is really only the foundation for innovations that are even more impressive.

Because it is what Google Earth allows people to do and the ways in which it is used that are truly staggering.

Everybody - from academics to estate agents, via ecological and political campaigners - has found huge benefits which revolutionise or redefine what they do by mashing-up mission or business critical data with Google Earth's mapping.

Cheat Sheets

♦ Web 2.0
♦ Mash-ups

This week's US midterm elections have seen mash-ups of demographic and political data with Google Earth, enabling voters to see the bigger picture - potentially combating apathy and encouraging voters to turn out.

And take the case of the group of marine biologists who are using Google Earth to illustrate the passage of a tagged whale shark around the Indian Ocean. The migratory patterns of the world's largest fish have long been a mystery to scientists, now this application enables the sharing of this data on a very clear representation of the shark's movement. (And speaking shark's... what's this?)

David Girouard, general manager of Google Enterprise, told me when we met up this week that any business for whom location is an issue stands to benefit from Google Earth. Companies that want to offer advanced 'store finder' capabilities or trace a fleet of trucks or cars - like they were whale sharks - can also do so.

Girouard is clearly proud of Google's achievements in putting such a powerful, yet simple, geo-spatial tool into people's hands. He said: "This used to be for rocket scientists only but now anybody can try it."

Other users within the Google Earth community have mashed up layers of other mapping data and other images, such as the National Geographic's aerial photography of Africa which puts stunning shots into context.

And bloggers and community sites, once dedicated to finding unusual sights on Google Earth are now quick to seize upon innovations and flag them up for others.

Large companies are also getting in on the act. British Airways is using Google Earth mash-ups on its website to provide destination information to customers.

Girouard admits he is genuinely surprised at how Google Earth is being put to use and what developers outside his company have achieved. "Emails fly around Google every single day saying 'look what I've just found'," he told me.

It's easy to forget just how vast our planet is and what a patchwork of sights and scenery it offers. Similarly we're only just learning what we can do with a thorough understanding of that scale. Google Earth isn't going to be enough to quell my wanderlust but it's certainly compelling enough - in fact 'addictive' would be a better word - to keep me in my seat for hours on end.