Google Earth

Google Earth, mapping service produced by the American search engine company Google. Google Earth allows users to call up on their computer screens detailed satellite images of most locations on Earth. These maps can be combined with various overlays—such as street names, weather patterns, crime statistics, coffee-shop locations, real-estate prices, population densities, and so forth—supplied by other companies and individuals.

The technology behind Google Earth arose in 1998 at the computer company Silicon Graphics, which gave a demonstration that began with a view of Earth from space and smoothly zoomed in on a computer chip. The engineers behind the demonstration founded a computer graphics company, Intrinsic Graphics, which in 2000 spun off its mapping software project into a new company, Keyhole. The U.S. government’s National Imagery and Mapping Agency funded Keyhole through the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital fund In-Q-Tel. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Keyhole’s software, EarthViewer, was used extensively by the U.S. military and intelligence community as well as by CNN on the air. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and EarthViewer was rebranded as Google Earth the following year.

Google’s commitment to privacy was questioned after it introduced a related mapping service, Street View, that showed street-level photographs from around the United States that were searchable by street address. Some photographs provided a view through house windows or showed persons sunbathing. Google defended the service, saying that the images showed only what people could see if walking down the street, but eventually allowed users to request that their homes be blurred. Faces and license plates are blurred automatically.

In October 2008 Google Earth for the iPhone and the iPod Touch was released as a downloadable application from Apple Inc.’s App Store. With support for the accelerometer (motion detector) in Apple’s portable devices, this version of Google Earth adjusts three-dimensional map perspectives as the devices are tilted.