So it has finally happened.
Today, I’m happy to announce the release of the new Google Earth Browser Plug-in, which brings the full power of Google Earth to the web, embeddable within your own web site. Driven by an extensive JavaScript API, you can control the camera; create lines, markers, and polygons; import 3D models from the web and overlay them anywhere on the planet. In fact, you can even overlay your content over different planets, stars, and galaxies by toggling Sky mode, letting you build 3D Google Sky mashups. You can also enable 3D buildings with a single line of JavaScript, attach JavaScript callbacks to mouse events, fetch KML data from the web, and more. Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers in the hopes that you’ll build the next great geo-based 3D application, and change (yet again) how we view the world.
So has this made you sit up and get excited (and rush off to download the plugin) or are you giving it a big “meh“?
I’ve been of the feeling that 3D is too complex for simple mapping applications and frustrates the community at large. That said I felt the same way about Google Earth when people started getting all excited about it. Virtual Earth 3D seems to be popular with folks so I see no reason why there won’t be a huge jump into embedding Google Earth in the browser.
Everyone wants the Google Earth in the browser
38 Comments
They must have liked what they have seen with WorldWind Java.
Can’t have anyone else enjoy all the fun.
KoS
WorldWind Java? Never heard of it!
I don’t know, is there really demand for this? VE3D hasn’t really taken off has it (or have I just not noticed it?) and GE is still niche.
Downloading right now. It will be interesting to see the “install” requirements. After dealing with IT staff that don’t want to install GE Pro, maybe this is the solution.
So who is going to write the code to bring the ArcGIS Server REST API into this Google Earth web browser plugin?
Great, the Jesus application is now a browser plugin.
Yawn….
So do you need to install Google Earth in addition to this?
No Larry, it is on its own. I’m not sure yet what limitations there are vs the google earth application.
So anyone install it yet? I’d like to hear from a GIS pro rather than these “neogeographers”.
*note: I love neogeographers…
I installed it and checked it out. Embedding it into one of my existing google maps api pages isn’t as easy as it should be, but the page I tried it on does some pretty advanced stuff.
@ ESRIBoy there is no extra coding needed to get ArcGIS Server stuff on top of this, the KML service is included in 9.3 and the rest API.
James: I thought you are the GIS man in the know.
j/k of course
KoS
I’ll be excited when the plugin is available for Mac and Linux – that’s what’s missing from the VE3D plugin right now.
i am also disappointed that google is doing everything for windows nowadays…
Paolo: Mac and Linux support will happen later this summer.
I wonder which we’ll see first. VE3D or Google Earth Plugin on Macintosh.
Once Google led, now they follow
As a GIS type person of well over 10 years (I feel old…) – it’s great to have this geo-goodness spread to the masses, but I can’t see what the Google Earth plugin has to offer above VE 3D.
VE 3D has cities that have far superior rendering and soon will have time of day shading.
As for anyone wanting 3D. Give it another 2-3 years time and it’ll be the standard.
Shame you cant use it on a commercial website.
I’m up here at the Google I/O conference and was quite impressed with the gEarth API, it’s very similar to the gMaps API too! Don’t worry Linux/Mac will be out soon.
One of my company’s featured products is KML data and I’m very happy that the end-user won’t have to load a desktop app to view them now
we too output kml to our clients who often report problems as they cant install GE.
So how do I now instruct them to view KML files that I have sent them in a browser? I assume I will have to upload them somewhere?
Yeah it seems like this will be good for skipping the loading of an app external to the browser and (duh?) making it more of a monetizing machine? Think of the ads you can surround it with in a browser while pushing it out into as many pages as possible?
As soon as the linux version is out I’l be playing with it. If you’re doing just GIS, then you may well be right to yawn. If you’re doing spatial, then it is indeed interesting. For me a suitably loose description of the difference is GIS does “spatial maths” or “spatial numerical analysis” and generally creates new data layers, while spatial includes anything that views, stores or selects spatially related (geo?) data [1]. As such, there is a high overlap with most GIS operations using spatial, but with the spatial pie enveloping much more than just GIS. My interest is very much in the wider spatial pie so I’m in.
[1] Not sure where to put fps style games here. Definitely spatial, even if the worlds are completely imaginative. I suspect we will see more tech crossover between the geo and games worlds in coming years, though fps style games are not something I know much about.
@Matthew Snape: I’m sure in due course you will be able to pony up for a commercial license in usual google style.
I agree with James that 3D often seems to be overkill and/or too complex for simple mapping applications. One of the reasons we haven’t pushed out ArcGIS Explorer (we’re an ESRI shop) is because our non-technical users have trouble working in a 3D environment. Call me crazy but I often feel like simple is better (at least for our users).
I have to agree with James and Jason. The 3D applications that I have worked with GE and ArcGIS Explorer seem to add a level of complexity that is not needed for most presentation of spatial data and tools. I am surprised more casual users have not been put off by the navigation controls and the frequency that they change from release to release.
I think the golden nugget in here could be better KML support in the browser. Both MSVE and GMaps struggle with anything more than a few hundred geometries. It really limits the kind of mapping you can do in a browser – IMHO.
In my experience, 3D data often seem to only make sense if you already know what you are supposed to be looking at. I refer to this as the technical reference manual paradox.
Clearly there are very important things being done with this plug-in.
http://www.google.com/earth/plugin/examples/milktruck/
AA
Well, James got the “Meh” part right.. slashdot is covering the release and most users are not that excited about it.
@Chad: You think slashdot is a reliable metric? I’m far from convinced most /.ers even read an article before they comment on it.
Skyline has been doing this for a while but they do not have the name recognition that a Google has. There was a limited release of a linux version for the release of the Geoportail. (Be warned – it is in French) http://www.geoportail.fr/5061756/actu/5065760/decouvrez-le-geoportail-en-3d.htm You can probably write them and ask them for that release. http://www.skylineglobe.com/SkylineGlobe/corporate/home/index.aspx There are some cool things like embedded chat and the touring with a friend. You both have to be members to chat and collaborate through the globe. (Free sign up.) Of course there are some of the standard things like GPS and image tagging.
Fundamentally, this is nothing new: people have been writing add-ins for browsers or other applications to connect to and display public Google geo sites for years, ever since Google Earth first appeared.
Google’s response to that has been to use the legal system to crush such efforts, like their infamous take down of WorldWind. So let’s not have anyone be fooled by propaganda written for morons of the form “Our goal is to open up the entire core of Google Earth to developers.” That’s not their goal at all, since the entire core of Google Earth has long been open to developers, publically exposed as it is through ordinary HTML streams as standardized by the usual consortia and painfully obvious to any developer with even the slightest forebrain activity.
The point of this Google initiative is to compel developers to use Google’s browser and only Google’s browser to visit Google’s public geocontent web sites and web services – their “API” is in fact a “browser” and that is what the terms and conditions of use of that API are all about.
Google is not stupid – they are in the advertising business and they understand perfectly well that the gateway to all advertising is, ultimately, the browser.
They want to own that so they can vertically integrate their search stack with the user experience from browser to eyeball capture for advertising (the whole point of search). The main reason they did Google Earth is to shift the browser experience from an abstract form into a location-based form where search results are displayed in geographic context, to blend the visual display of images with search results (all those mashups are really just a different form of search) and Google’s advertising. Google Earth is indeed sufficient eye candy to overcome the inertia of getting people to switch over to Google’s console for viewing the web. The key now for Google is to build bridges that move people at every opportunity from browsers Google does not own to a Google-owned experience.
The Google API is like an parasitic vine that crawls over a tree and eventually crowds out the original framework to stand alone – it becomes the browser and thus places the browser in Google’s hands. If you think that is OK, great, but let’s not have any characterization of this as being “open,” because this add-in seeks as a matter of law to control what in the public web you look at, how you look at it and even for what purposes you can look at it. Think that’s not the case? Have a good attorney explain to you the sophisticated legal impact of the terms and conditions Google seeks to impose. Those T’s and C’s are brilliantly crafted to seem innocuous to the inexpert while enclosing a mailed fist.
It’s just the Web 3.0 continuation of the browser wars, only this time it is Google trying to be the monopolist. It will be interesting to see if all those who freaked out and attacked Microsoft for allegedly pushing IE over alternatives, “tying” and so on, will apply the same standard to Google. In a more sophisticated legal nuance, it will be interesting to see how Google manages on the one hand to claim for itself in Google’s own litigation the sweeping rights Google seeks to invade and utilize everything exposed in any way through public connections on the Web with Google’s own desire to greatly limit other people’s rights to utilize what Google itself exposes through public connections on the Web. It appears that some of the best legal arguments made to fend off Google’s takedowns of alternatives to Google browsers would be Google’s own filings in defence of Google’s invasions of other people’s sites.
By the way, for those who have technical difficulties understanding that this is a browser issue in which no stinkin’ APIs are required to browse public web content, there is a useful proof-by-example at: http://www.manifold.net/toolbar – This is an elementary IE add-in that has been out for a long time, uses no proprietary APIs and demonstrates that tile-serving image servers such as Virtual Earth, Yahoo, Google, etc., are indeed just another form of public content viewable by browsers using elementary and universally accepted HTML conventions. [There is, of course, given Google's Nazi legal tactics no Google-specific content in the above URL (it's all Microsoft's Virtual Earth) - but it is still a useful proof by example.]
Dimitri…you know as well as everyone else. No one is gonna scream like smashed cats when Google does their thing. Everyone is blinded by the “no evil” in their motto.
Plus, they all are good libs. They can never do wrong.
You sir, in the end, are correct!!
KoS
@Dimitri:
“Google’s response to that has been to use the legal system to crush such efforts, like their infamous take down of WorldWind. “
sigh At LEAST get your geo-globe right. It was not WorldWind (that was just the plug-in-which-shall-not-be-named”) it was the Gaia geo-globe that Google shot down.
No, Chad, I wrote WorldWind because I intended to refer to Google’s takedown of NASA’s WorldWind browser for Google, not to Google’s takedown of Gaia or to any of the other open connections to Google sites that Google also shot in the head.
Browsing public geo sites is a fundamental function of WorldWind and Google’s take down of this fundamental capability of WorldWind because it provided an open alternative to Google’s own browser is exactly on point to my posting.
Well-informed readers of this blog will remember how NASA’s WorldWind team published instructions and a plug-in for using WorldWind to browse Google, which, of course prompted Google to go into their Darth Google mode to liquidate even any mention of the possibility of such usage from any NASA site. NASA immediately folded, of course, since a handful of PhD’s at Ames cannot resist the power of a multi-hundred billion dollar empire when it attacks. Resistance is futile and all that.
By the way, the WorldWind takedown was not “just” a matter of a “plug-in-which-shall-not-be-named,” – it was a typical shoot-to-kill legal threat by Google to crush a competitive, open source browser before it could get traction. It shows that characteristic Google expertise in the use of threats coupled with that characteristic Google wantonness, in that they knew they could get away with crushing an indisputably public spirited and popular open competitor, WorldWind, with nary a peep from the open source community.
Hey, if Microsoft had launched a Death Star assault against NASA’s WorldWind team like Google did, I don’t think there would be any doubt in the minds of the worldly readers of this blog that you’d have hordes of open source proponents pulling out their torches and pitchforks for an assault on Redmond, calling for a boycott of Virtual Earth, etc.. [For the record, Microsoft actually encouraged WorldWind and even published instructions on Microsoft sites for how to use WorldWind to connect to Virtual Earth - good on you, Microsoft!].
Dimitri.. please, tell me where you get you’re information from? I talk almost daily with the WorldWind project manager, and have since 2004. So, I would say I might know better on the information front.
First off, it was ONLY the non-NASA, PUBLIC developed plug-in and a PHP script that got Google’s hackles up and prompted their lawyers to call the NASA WW Project manager which he passed the information along to us.
Browsing public geo sites is a fundamental function of WorldWind and Google’s take down of this fundamental capability of WorldWind because it provided an open alternative to Google’s own browser is exactly on point to my posting.
Huh? When did WorldWind do this? WW does not “browse” anything.. other than entered WMS servers and WWXML add-ons that may point to public WMS sites. So, I am not sure what gave you that idea.
Well-informed readers of this blog will remember how NASA’s WorldWind team published instructions and a plug-in for using WorldWind to browse Google
And more well informed readers will know you are full of something that smells really bad. NASA had zilch, nada, NOTHING to do with anything Google related for a plug-in or instructions.
As for Microsoft, Casey Chesnut wrote the original plug-in as a “Hmm, can I do this?” and actually worked with people at Microsoft to get it to work. Later, communication was made with Microsoft and we were allowed to release the plug-in for non-commercial use as long as the logo is displayed. It seems that Microsoft got a better imagery deal and were allowed to let others use it. Google has always said “our providers won’t let us share”.
[For the record, Microsoft actually encouraged WorldWind and even published instructions on Microsoft sites for how to use WorldWind to connect to Virtual Earth - good on you, Microsoft!].
You HAVE to post links when you make bold claims like that. But there is no need for Microsoft to do anything like that, you just need to install the VE plug-in.
And by the way… it was a typical shoot-to-kill legal threat by Google to crush a competitive, open source browser before it could get traction It was the millions that Google spends on advertising and brainwashed bloggers to get the AOL of the Geoweb out there.
And don’t try to BS a WorldWind blogger on WorldWind points.
True it was an Open Source developer who made the Google plug-in, NASA claim no knowledge it existed, I will point out it was posted on a NASA run forum on a NASA server though. Strangely Google’s legal team contacted NASA, and not the plug-in author or Open Source community, NASA then instructed all its forum admins to wipe any mention of the plug-in from the forums, and suggested that any individuals who wanted to remain part of World Wind or continue to work closely with NASA remove any content from external web sites too.
We will never know what exactly got NASA so worried, but the threats must have been pretty strong, and I do believe that in part NASA did this to protect some community members. Also note some of us who were using the plugin were contacted by NASA and told to stop, as Google had noted are IP addresses and obviously managed to track them to our real identities.
This was all before the official gmaps API was released, when that was released I asked again about making a plug-in, the response from Google was basically ‘don’t try it’.
Microsoft have also had their legal team contact us, basically due to lack of communication between departments, but they are much more polite and it is quickly cleared up after an email. As for Microsoft having a less restrictive deal with their suppliers, from what I have personally seen that is BS.
Back on topic, why would anyone but web surfers want this new Ge3D API? I’m sure it can’t work on a closed LAN as imagery from Google is not available in offline cache packs, this is where World Wind Java will do well, and also being designed for an internal gov agency it will be pretty easy to get IT departments to deploy it, along with other .gov and .mil agencies. Of course I may be wrong Google seems to encourage adoption well, using money or other means, note the nice new land deal google got at AMES, and I have also noted at least one NASA employee who supports Google also has a spouse who works for them.
edit – It was also quite amusing to find google had the plug-in in its cache for weeks after we were toldto remove it, so anyone could actually still get the code.
A very interesting post, Bull. Have you documented your interactions with Google or with NASA acting on behalf of Google in any blogs or other web sites? You know what they say, “evil flourishes when good men turn away” so part of keeping this sort of evil on Google’s part in check is exposing it to scrutiny.
As I said before, Google is not stupid – they are very expert at making effective threats. One technique they use is to restrict their most threatening statements to telephone conversations made from locations where they know it is illegal for participants to tape record the conversation. Google is extremely careful not to reply in writing or by email to any written requests for clarification of either their threats or even just what they want. They do that because they know that once a written record emerges of Google acting like Nazis that will be searchable on the Internet forever.
Quite the remarkable comment. I trust that everyone reading this blog now understands from the above that Google conducts surveillance on your business and personal use of public Google websites and public Google services without any disclosure to you. If you feel comfortable with that, fine, but if you do this involving any third party (customer, a visitor to your web site, an employee, an underage child, etc.) you might want to have a good attorney explain to you the incredible density of laws regulating privacy and disclosure of surveillance, explicit opt-out requirements and the like that have been passed in many thousands of jurisdictions worldwide in recent years. I mean, Google may have the funds to ignore legal inconveniences but you might not: suppose you use Google in an application and your clients discover Google is selling them out or invading their privacy… it is you who will be on the hook for not disclosing that risk to your clients.
This is a good example of Google’s “wantonness” as well in that it is really going over the line from an ethical perspective (even if it is an open question whether it violates either California or Federal law) to track IP usages of perfectly legal open source involving a federal agency product to bring legal pressure in a private civil dispute, at least without notifying people that surveillance is being conducted. Just like the phone company can’t wiretap someone to help their own attorneys win a case in, say, a more competitive phone company offering better rates, I don’t think this is at all OK.
I agree. Google is very good at what they do, and they have this “lead or silver” [the classic Columbian drug lord offer you can't refuse - go along and get paid in silver or fight them and get lead in the form of a bullet in your head...] thing down pat.
I think Google realized they came too close to getting a bad rep with the WorldWind thing so they went into “silver” mode and sent money NASA’s way.
Chad,
A strange post from you. If you are indeed a WorldWind blogger I hope your blog does not suffer from the lack of precision your post indicates. Let’s look at the details that matter:
Yes, exactly. That was exactly the part we are talking about, the part that extended WorldWind’s ability to browse geo sites to Google sites.
You have used WorldWind and you write the above? Chad, I don’t know where you’ve been the last few years but let me take a moment to educate you on the development of the modern web: browsers can now view all sorts of content in addition to simple text. Browsers now can view images (wow!), video, sound, flash, PDF and can even view collections of images presented in various forms such as provide by tiled image server web sites like Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps and Google Earth.
If you think “browsing” means just visiting one particular technology, such as WMS or text, you are missing the point of the modern web.
Part of that, by the way, is that browsing the public web is now part of many applications in addition to classic HTML-only browsers. Some of those new browsers take advantage of specialization (isn’t diversity great?) to provide custom user interfaces to make browsing a particular sort of data better. PDF/acrobat plug-ins for IE are a good example of such specialization, but that IE can utilize such plug-ins doesn’t make it any less of a “browser” for crusing through web sites to view the public content they provide, whether it be text, PDF, .doc, etc.. Just so, WorldWind is a classic example of a browser specialized for viewing a wide variety of data, often geographic in nature, that’s served out to the web.
I realize that some folks who don’t have a technical background might be confused whether something might be better called a “browser” or a “viewer,” but I trust readers of this blog have sufficient technical expertise to realize that anything which can indeed connect to a wide variety of public web sites and web services to browse and to view the information they provide is really the same sort of thing in which small variations in language that confuse the inexpert do not matter. Technically-literate people realize that “browsing” a geographic tiled image view by panning is almost literally the equivalent of scrolling through text when browsing a text-only web site.
By the way, that bit about “confusing the inexpert” is a key point for Google, since they are counting on morons not seeing that they are fighting a browser war. Trying to establish a new browser monopoly would be seen even by retards as a bad thing, but if you can “confound the plainest truth” by getting the inexpert to agree you are simply promoting a proprietary viewer, well, that’s just the ticket to slide your plans past tame Eurocrats and the like.
Oh, I never said NASA wrote it, I said they published it. That’s not exactly “nothing” (can’t bring myself to quote those capital letters…) as you state. It is the heart of the matter.
That’s why Google went after NASA, because when NASA published info on this and showed the world how to use WorldWind to browse Google sites that’s what Google wanted to takedown, not some anonymous guy who doesn’t have the reach and visibility of NASA WorldWind.
The point of my posting still stands:
NASA’s WorldWind was and is indeed a browser of “the GeoWeb” (as you put it).
WorldWind acquired the ability to browse Google’s public sites in competition to to Google’s own “GeoWeb” browser. This was accomplished using elementary HTML interfaces as widely documented by the usual consortia and not through any licensing of some proprietary API.
NASA published the above to the world on the WorldWind site, giving links and instructions on how to utilize that capability within WorldWind.
Google deployed their legal threats to crush NASA, forcing them to takedown their competition to Google. Forcing a site to remove content is indeed a “takedown.”
I think there’s lots of debate that could be had whether Google acted reasonably or not, whether NASA cravenly folded or whether their supine capitulation was an understandable and forgiveable act of survival for a small Ames team, whether what we are learning about what happened should give people pause about doing business with Google, and on many other aspects of this. All that can be debated from many different perspectives, no doubt. But whether or not NASA’s WorldWind had this capability and whether or not Google acted to takedown that capability is not in dispute. I see, Chad, that even you agree with that, you’re just somehow dancing around with those notions as if exactly who the author of the capability somehow matters to Google shooting NASA in the head over it.
Dimitri, unfortunately I cant blog the whole story as most of my emails were marked as confidential, and others have asked me not to mention what they told me in confidence, so I would have nothing to back up my case, and people would assume I am just being a World Wind fanboy.
Ok.. you have so much miss-information in your reply that to be honest.. I am not even going to bother with a long reply.
I will summarize the points:
You are so wrong that it is laughable.
You are making stuff up now.
You have to stop smoking what ever it is you are smoking.
Go back to what you are best at.. Manifold ;~)