25 MORE ways Google Earth is clarifying, classifying, and changing our world!

In part one of this blog, we covered 25 ways Google Earth is helping clarify and change our world. In this part two, we’ll cover 25 more facts about Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Street View, including a bunch of cool features that will leave you in awe!

1. You can’t see EVERYTHING on Google Maps. It’s estimated there are 51 things you aren’t allowed to see their maps for security or privacy concerns, including The White House, U.S. Capitol, certain military bases and embassies around the world, energy and nuclear sites, and even a few schools, private businesses, and certain towns are blurred.

2. Sites in hostile territories and rouge nations are often blurred out, as is the case with maps of North Korea, where you can only see low-res images of a few roads and other sites, but little in detail.

3. The owners of the satellites Google uses can choose to blur other certain areas. Additionally, Governments, businesses, municipalities, and even private parties can petition Google to blur their location.

4. Are you obsessed with movies about end of the world and a nuclear apocalypse? Using Google’s Maps framework and a bit of programming tweaks, you can watch what would happen if a nuclear bomb happened to be detonated in your city.

5. If you thought Google Earth and its affiliated applications couldn’t get any cooler, consider that Google Earth includes a flight simulator so you can cruise over the earth like a top pilot! From the tools menu, just select “Enter Flight Simulator” and then you get to choose which aircraft you want to fly in, as well as what location you want to take off from. Amazing!

6. Using Google Maps to scan a bird’s eye view, a 1,000 year old “fish trap” constructed with stones set underwater was discovered off the coast of England.

7. Copyright violators should think twice about copying Google Maps and using them for their own. In fact, Google strategically inserts fake street names and features in their maps. Called “Copyright Easter Eggs,” they make it easy for Google to prove someone pirated their map – and take legal action against the offender.

8. Want to try a cool real estate function on Google Maps? If you go on the site and search for “homes,” it will produce a map of all the homes that are for sale in your area, including their prices.

9. Likewise, type in ‘*’ in the search field on Google Maps, and all of your local businesses will show up.

10. And if you press number 3 while looking at Google street view, a cool red-cyan 3D view will appear. However, you’ll need a pair of red-cyan glasses (3D glasses) to view it in 3D. 

11. Google Maps isn’t always used flawlessly around the world. In fact, Nicaraguan troops one time marched across the border into neighboring Costa Rica, burned a protected forest, dredged the San Juan river and dumped the contents, just because their commanding officer used Google Maps to plan his maneuver instead of military charts. Oops!

12. Where does the imagery for Google Maps and Google Earth? In fact, the satellite imagery for both mapping sites comes from a host of sources and third-party providers. It’s not data that’s exclusive to Google, as the imagery is actually available to anyone who wants to purchase it from these available public, government, commercial or private sector sources.

13. More than ever, Google Earth and Google Maps is an interactive experience, as you can set your own points of interest while adding your own descriptions and photographs, which will be superimposed on your map. Simply go to Create and Share Custom Google Maps to see how you can create your own fun and personal cartographic experiences.

14. In some ways, Google Earth picks up where Google Maps ends, as Google’s less popular site offers many features you can’t access on Google Maps.

15. With Google Earth, you can explore remote and isolated parts of our earth where there are no streets or cities, including the rainforests, the base camp of Mount Everest, Polar Regions and oceans.

16. Thanks to our space exploration program, you can now even explore digital satellite imagery of the Moon and Mars on Google Earth!

17. Google Maps can display up-to-the-minute traffic conditions in many part of the UK, allowing drivers to avoid busier and clogged roads. That feature is expected to expand to many more bumper-to-bumper and busy cities around the world.

18. Google’s Street View is taking their Maps and Earth programs to the next level. You can now explore world landmarks, natural wonders, and other notable spots, as well as two areas under the earth, including the subterranean ALICE caverns and Akiyoshi-do caves in Japan.

19. Google’s Street View function can document real life from a street-view, or person’s eye level perspective, with amazing detail and resolution. But what about protecting the privacy of those people who happened to be in these images? Google uses technology that automatically blurs every face in Street View, and even blurs license plate numbers on cars!

20. Street View even allows you to “enter” certain buildings, like museums, art galleries, important public buildings, libraries and restaurants, etc., and get a 360-degree view!

21. You can even take a “virtual walk” through the White House, the Palace of Versailles, the Roman Coliseum, and the tallest building in the world.

22. Google has partnered with thousands of business owners in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands to bring you these features, and is rapidly expanding their reach.

23. In fact, you can enter 156 museums around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, using the Google Art Project – without worrying about buying a ticket, long lines, or hours of operation!

24. Street View and other Google features may be revolutionizing how we document our world, but that sometimes comes with awkward situations. For instance, there are plenty of times where people are caught on camera doing illicit, inappropriate (or even illegal!) things in Google’s images.

25. Google scans for and removes as many of these occurrences as they can, but users can also report them by clicking "Report a problem" at the bottom of the image.

25 Ways Google Earth is clarifying, classifying, and changing our world!

If you go to https://www.google.com/earth/ you can download Google Earth for free on your PC or mobile device, and from there explore our world like never before, visiting far-off foreign countries with a bird’s eye view, zooming into an aerial image of your own house, or even explore Mars and the moon. But there are far more uses and applications to Google’s Earth, Maps, and Street View than just looking at static images. Here are 50 facts about Google Earth and how it’s both clarifying and changing our world:

1. Most people don’t realize that what we now known as Google Earth was originally called Earth Viewer.  The project was created by Keyhole, Inc., a company that received some of its funding from In-Q-Tel, which was a venture capital firm for hi-tech companies sponsored and funded by the CIA.

2. Instead of trying to design, create, and release their own cutting edge technologies, the CIA apparently just invests in smaller firms through this shell venture capital firm, and reaps the rewards that keep them armed with the latest information technology and advancements.

3. Nowadays, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Street View have become invaluable parts of every day life for billions of people around the world, including advances in agriculture, clean energy, weather patterns, geological tracking (earthquake, volcano, and tsunami tracking), gaining information about unfriendly foreign nations (like North Korea), scientific breakthroughs, solving natural mysteries, and documenting and protecting our natural environment. Oh, and I almost forgot that it helps us get from Point A to Point B on our roadways without getting hopelessly lost.

4. Every year, we use Google Maps to help us navigate through 12 billion miles of roads.

5. Since Google Map’s Street View project began in 2007, their team has driven more than 5 million unique miles of roads and taken tens of millions of images to document them.

6. There’s even a feature that lets you view where the Google Street View vehicles are driving at the moment.

7. If you add up all the satellite, aerial, and street level imagery that Google Maps has collected, it comes to over 20 petabytes of data (about 21 million gigabytes, or 20,500 terabyte drives lined up and used to capacity.)

8. Some of you photogs might be wondering what kind of cameras and image tech Google uses for their Street View project. In fact, each Street View camera system has 15 lenses that can take photos at an incredibly sharp 65-megapixel resolution.

9. These 15 lenses take photos simultaneously in a 360-degree panoramic, and then digitally align the photos to produce seamless images.

10. Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View images are updated as frequently as possible with logistics, weather, road, and other conditions permitting, but that usually comes to an update about once every two weeks.

11. Not everyone is a big fan of being documented by Google Earth. In fact, the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain banned Google Earth because it didn’t want its citizens to be able to see the huge areas of land owned by the royal family, dotted with swimming pools, mansions, and other opulence right next to overcrowded slums and villages.

12. The Chinese military inadvertently let the cat out of the bag on one of their military operations thanks to Google Earth. In 2006, a perfectly detailed 1:1500 scale model of a border region between China and India that was under dispute was photographed from above. The scale model of the terrain was 3,000 x 2,300 feet in size and right next to a Chinese military complex that apparently was using it to plan mock raids and troop movements.

13. Google Earth has a feature that allows you to recall historical imagery, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks can be seen.

14. A large number of shipwrecks that rest under the oceans and seas have been viewed with Google Earth, including the wreck of the Titanic!

15. When Google Earth images taken over Iran’s national airport were revealed for the first time, Iranian officials were shocked to see a Star of David – the symbol of Judaism – sitting atop the airport roof. Apparently, the star was erected and left by Israeli engineers who built the structure before the Iranian Revolution in 1979 when it was a more peaceful country, but not discovered for three decades.

16. An archeologist named Angela Micol discovered a grouping of lost Egyptian periods by surveying satellite images taken by Google Earth.

17. Virtually buried by thick jungle in a remote part of China, the world’s largest natural bridge was unknown to humankind until Google Earth observed and documented it. Now called The Fairy Bridge, it spans 400 feet of solid limestone across a river.

18. A rainforest in Mozambique in Africa – earned the nickname, ‘Google Forest’ after it was first discovered by scientists – as well as the mountain it spanned - using Google Earth in 2005, as only local villagers knew about it until then.

19. A lot of good can be done if the technology is in the right hands. For instance, they’re using Google Maps to track and mark dangerous landmine fields in Kosovo so others can avoid danger.

20. And scientists have used Google Maps to set up maps of every recent animal extinction or mass death.

21. Once isolated Tribes in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil have started using GPS and Google Earth technology to map their lands, monitor natural resources like rivers and medicinal plants, and monitor for illegal logging and mining.

22. In an eerie mystery befitting a sci-fi novel, there is a phantom city that shows up on Google Earth and Google Maps. The non-existent town was called Argleton and appeared on Google’s projections in West Lancashire, England before being removed.

23. Law enforcement agencies around the world have made good use of Google Earth’s mapping imagery, like the Swiss police force, which spotted a two-acre marijuana farm on Google Earth.

24. If you’ve used Google Earth, you may notice that it first centers in on a spot in the middle of the U.S. In fact, default center for Google Earth is Lawrence, Kansas – the home of the man most responsible for the technology, Brian McClendon.

25. Concerned about privacy after seeing that your house shows up in detail on Google Street View? You can request that Google blurs the image of your own home or address and they will comply.

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Look for part two of this blog, with 25 more facts about Google Earth!