My Google Map Blog

[Update: Google have now made an official announcement that Google Earth Pro is free. ]

The biggest Google Earth news this month is that Google Earth Pro is now free. Although there have not as yet been any official announcements from Google, GEB reader ‘AC’ has pointed out that the Google Earth licence support page for languages other than English states that from January 20th, 2015 the licence is free. Although many of the extra features found in Google Earth Pro will only be useful to GIS users, a few features that our readers have expressed interest in using are: the built in movie maker, area and perimeter measurements and the ability to turn off terrain completely.

Google also announced the deprecation of Google Maps Engine, which will be turned off on January 29th, 2016. It is important to note that this is not Google Maps, but another related product that allows you to create your own maps and mapping applications, which is being replaced by alternative solutions available from Google.

Google has not updated its ‘Latest Google Earth Imagery Updates’ map since December 17th last year, although new satellite imagery has been spotted by our readers.

Google has continued to roll out 3D imagery, with over 60 new areas or expansions to existing areas being added this month. With lots of hard work by GEB reader Anton Rudolfsson, we updated our map of 3D imagery to include the option to show areas sorted and colour coded according to the date they were first spotted in Google Earth. We are continuing to refine it with suggestions by GEB readers. We also checked the dates that some of the imagery was captured and discovered that Google takes a considerable amount of time to process the 3D imagery prior to releasing it.

Our new colour coded 3D imagery map.

This month we also started our “Google Earth plugin showcase” series. Our favorites in the series so far are the Google Earth Flight Simulator Online and the Monster Milk Truck.

Flying in the monster milk truck, and driving in an A380.

The post The best of Google Earth for January 2015 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.