An update to Google Earth for the iPhone

Monday, November 16, 2009 | 1:18 PM

Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long blog

Just over one year ago, we unveiled Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch. Google Earth quickly became one of the most popular applications in the App Store, and after only six months, was the second most-downloaded free application overall. A big thank-you to the over 220,000 users have taken the time to write a review!

Today, we're proud to announce version 2.0 of Google Earth for iPhone. We've added some exciting new features, including the ability to view maps that you create on your desktop computer right from your iPhone, explore the app in new languages, and improved icon selection and performance.

View your maps wherever you go

Have you ever wanted to view a custom map with Google Earth on your iPhone? Well, now you can. By logging in directly to your Google Maps account, you can view the same maps that you or others have created, using the My Maps interface. Maybe you're on a trip and want to see where Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet, most likes to travel. Or perhaps you're walking around looking for a restaurant and you want to see where world-famous chef Ferran Adrià likes to eat. All you have to do is click "Save to My Maps", open Earth on the iPhone, log in with the same account information, and voilà, you have your same collection of My Maps right in your pocket.



It's fun to create and view your own maps as well. Here's an example of a map that I created that shows the two attempts my friends and I made to summit Mount Ritter in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As you can see, we didn't quite make it (the red line is the intended route, and the blue and green lines are our 2008 and 2009 attempts, respectively). Next year we'll get it for sure! I created this map by using the desktop version of Google Earth to read the tracks directly out of my GPS device, saving the resulting tracks as a KML file, and then importing into My Maps in Google Maps. You can learn more about My Maps here.

Browse businesses, photos, and places more easily
Browsing the world from the palm of your hand can be a thrilling experience, and viewing photos, Wikipedia articles, and place information is a great way to discover new parts of the globe. With the latest version of Google Earth for iPhone, we've made this even easier. Now, when you touch an icon, a small glow appears under your finger to let you know which icon you have picked. If your finger touches more than one icon, you'll be taken to a list of all icons, so you can select the one you are interested in.



New languages
We've also included new languages in this release, bringing the total to 31 languages from the original 18. The complete list of languages is: English (U.S), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malaysian, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian.

We hope you enjoy our latest release. Please note that the app will be rolling out around the world over the next twenty-four hours - if you don't see it immediately, be sure to check back soon. You can download Google Earth for iPhone here.

Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

13 comments:

Vorstand LokPopp said...

Why isn't it available for Android phones?

gerrrg said...

Vorstand +1. I too am wondering why.

Unknown said...

I second that! I just left the iPhone for the Droid. I feel like the least favored child now. How about Google Earth for Android?!?

Niraj said...

Would love to see this for Windows Mobile!

Unknown said...

Another Android user wondering where our version is. My phone says "With Google" on the back, so it seems like we should get the nifty apps first. :P

Marc said...

Here's one too. I'm wondering why there's no info about any release date for Google Earth for Android yet.

Gilad Garon said...

It's nice to see how Google supports their own OS , oh wait a minute, IPhone is not Google's OS? I could have sworn it is.

Support your OWN OS Google!

Tiến Nguyễn said...

Make it happen for Android please!!!

crizo said...

This is so awesome. I've been waiting for this one..

Unknown said...

Shame it's too large to download - I get an error "Application over 10MB. Connect to a WiFi network".

Unknown said...

ANDROID TROLLs .. feck off!

Jonathan Camargo said...

So why has Google Earth for iPhone never been available on the mexican App store? It seems weird that we just got Street View for Mexico City but we don't have access to this app. What gives? I really can't think of any reason.

mehmet said...

Jonathan, i have a similar problem. Google Earth is not available in Turkey store too. It is really weird that Google Earth even got Turkish language sopport but i can not download it!

I was using a nokia s60 phone for last 2 years. And i was using google maps symbian application on it often. Google Maps application on Symbian even got Latitude and My Maps support. It was a joy using it. Bu on iphone it is to sad that i can not have that kind of application despide that georgeus hardware in my hands.