My Google Map Blog

[Update 2: It appears that this release is necessary for viewing Google Maps Gallery maps including public maps that do not normally require a sign in. However, public Google Maps Engine maps such as the Monthly Imagery Updates map appear to still work. In addition, Google Maps Engine maps have been removed from the Google Maps Gallery and there is a message saying they are no-longer supported by the Gallery]

[Update 1: Apparently this release is necessary for viewing maps from Google Maps Engine in Google Earth after May 29, 2015. This probably only applies to private maps that require you to log-in to Google Earth and not to public maps.]

Thank you to GEB reader ‘A.C.’ for alerting us to the fact that Google has released a new minor version of Google Earth. This release comes just under a month after the previous update, which was the first update in nearly two years.

This update actually has some release notes that tell us what has been changed:

• The Google account sign-in process was updated from OAuth 1.0 to OAuth 2.0, given the deprecation of Oauth 1.0. Users of all previous versions of Earth will not be able to sign-in with their Google accounts after May 30th, 2015.
• Fixes issues with the auto-update process on Mac OS X.

The sign-in process mentioned is not the licence sign-in currently required in Google Earth Pro, but rather the sign-in option found at the far right of the tool bar that allows you to sign-in with a Google account. Signing in with a Google account makes it easy to share a screen shot to Google+, send an Email with an image, View, or Placemark, or post to the Google Earth Community forum. The latter probably no-longer works anyway, as the Google Earth Community recently moved. In our case the option is greyed out, probably because the Google Account we tested with is not a member of the old Google Earth Community. The link to the Google Earth Community found in the Help menu still points to the old community website.

If you do use the above feature, or have had problems with Google Earth updates on Mac OS X, then you may want to manually update to this new version. Otherwise, don’t bother and just let Google’s auto-update process update your Google Earth on their schedule. Having said that, we have a laptop which has not yet auto-updated to the 7.1.4 version released last month.

If you do wish to manually update you can try downloading from Google’s usual download site. Keep in mind that Google rolls out updates over a period of several weeks so not everybody will get the latest version from that site immediately.

In addition, here are some direct download links specifically for the 7.1.5 release:
Windows Earth+Plugin
Windows Earth Pro
Mac Earth+Plugin
Mac Earth
Mac Earth Pro

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