Although you think Google Earth as one of Google’s creative and breakthrough inventions, it is indeed a wrong conception. Google Earth was not written by Google. It was created and developed by Keyhole Inc., a company which was bought by Google in 2004. Anyway, this is a great piece of software which offers a wide range of facilities and services to general public, business organizations and governments.

Google Earth is simply the earth in your PC. You can see every knock and corner of the earth with very little restrictions. The quality of the images is often very high so it is very convenient to find any place on the earth. There are three main resources of obtaining these footages for superimposing the earth surface: satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D Globe. Currently there are three versions of Google Earth available: Google Earth: a free version but having limited functionality, Google Earth Plus: version which includes some additional features and Google Earth Pro: the version developed for commercial use with many add-ons.

Currently Google Earth client software can be used in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD platforms. The alternative for the other platforms is Google Maps. You still can see the earth surface but in a map form instead of 3D view the Google Earth provides. Before the latest release of Google Earth (before version 4), 3D structures were not widely available and it was limited to few well known cities while having poor rendering.