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Google Earth Pro is now free
... Has tools to measure 3D buildings and other locations, print high-resolution screenshots, view demographic and traffic layers, and even record your virtual trips.
- glhaynes 12y agoThis page has some info on the differences between the regular edition and Pro. https://www.google.com/work/mapsearth/products/earthpro.html https://www.google.com/work/mapsearth/products/earthpro.html
- mden 12y agoThis sounds really awesome, but does anyone have an explanation as to why they are doing it? Building something like Google Earth Pro must take many millions of dollars, so why would a company release it for free?
- ChuckMcM 12y agoPeople feel less bad when a large corporation drops all support for a 'free' product than they do for a $400 one?
- JoshTriplett 12y agoPerhaps they had few enough customers that the effort of maintaining the "Pro" version wasn't worth it? Perhaps they're starting to see a handful of people relying on other data sources, so they want to give people an incentive to stick with Google?
- ghshephard 12y agoGoogle Earth cost on the order of 10s of millions of dollars to write, with a couple of the key companies, keyhole and Where2, being acquired for approx. $40mm. [1] . Google Earth Pro is a small, but very useful addition to the base Google Earth - I know a lot of network designers who get by just fine with Google Earth, and have never availed themselves of Google Earth Pro. The real cost, of course, is maintaining and serving all that data. I expect that Google, in offering Google Earth Pro for free, ensures that no other competition can slide into this space, and, I also expect the incremental revenue associated with the Google Earth Pro licenses probably wasn't worth the cost of not owning that market 100%. This is going to make life for a lot of the other GIS vendors even more miserable than it already is - I can see MapInfo being annoyed by this decision. Just spitballing, but perhaps Google is looking at acquiring them (or a competitor?) [1] http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-Google-acquire-Keyhole-(Google-Earth)-for http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-Google-acquire-Keyhole-(Go...
- 7952 12y agoGoogle Earth has never been a serious competitor for GIS. If they had added more features 5 years ago it may have gained traction. It is great for viewing and creating small datasets. Viewing larger datasets required a surprising amount of effort in terms of tiling and converting. The tools built into Google Earth were never very good and people were pointed at server products. This was completely at odds with the simple ethos of Google Earth and often lead companies to invest in expensive ESRI products that offered Google Earth support! Google are concentrating on server products with web interfaces and GE never fit into that. It is fantastic for professional users but Google have no idea how to sell to those kind of people.
- abruzzi 12y agoWhich is sad because ESRI desperately needs some competition. It always feels about 10 years out of date.
- ghshephard 12y agoI am aware of at least approx $500mm company that extensively uses Google Earth/Google Earth Pro for its modeling, analysis, and data presentation needs. In terms of data set sizes, typical sizes range up to approx 3mm-5mm data points per project. The engineers that use GoogleEarthPro also have experience with MapInfo, but frequently chose to use Google Earth, simply because it's easier. I'm not suggesting that Google Earth will ever replace MapInfo/ArcGIS - but don't underestimate how much of the "lower end" GIS market that GoogleEarth took away from them.
- threeseed 12y agoIf you don't pay for something you can't expect support or updates. So could be that Google is simply moving that team onto more strategically useful projects. Personally I can't see why they kept supporting this as it isn't core business.
- BrindsleyQuives 12y agoArse-Sum!!!!
- userbinator 12y agoI notice the link "grab a free key" leads to a URL ending with free_trial.html, and that page is a form that asks for plenty of information. The lack of any justification for why something that used to be $399 is now free also feels a bit odd to me... like it's somehow implying that giving Google your name, company, phone number, and other information is, to them, worth more than $399?
- atian 12y agono. what if you were making a product free that you no longer wanted to support? remember: paying users expect support a. make free without knowing who is using your project b. make free with knowing who is using your project
- CamperBob2 12y agoa.
- neindanke 12y agoRegistration is failing for me at the moment.
- flomo 12y agoRegistration failed for me with a message suggesting such remedies as trying a different email address. Punched in a gmail address and it worked. Perhaps coincidentally.
- johnpowell 12y agoSame with me. It failed with that error when I tried with my fastmail email address. Switched to a gmail one and then it worked.
- WorldWideWayne 12y agoI entered my primary gmail address and got the error. Then I entered my secondary gmail address and it worked.
- vilhelm_s 12y agoYep. > Error! Your sign up can not be completed due to We're sorry. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again later..
- Intermernet 12y agoLove that error message (I'm getting it as well). "can not be completed due to We're sorry." I might start using that as a reason.
- ghshephard 12y agoI registered, but got the following when I tried to download: http://dl.google.com/earth/client/advanced/current/GoogleEarthProMac-Intel.dmg http://dl.google.com/earth/client/advanced/current/GoogleEar... Access to this site is currently restricted
- superdude 12y agoYears ago before I started at my current job some people had Google Earth (free) on their PCs. But then someone read an updated Terms of Use and determined that we actually needed to be using the paid version of Google Earth so many people had their copies removed from their PCs. Then around the time I started someone read an updated Terms of Use and it was determined that there was no problem using the regular version of Google Earth. So it became part of the standard build. Then about a year ago someone read another updated Terms of Use and determined that we were out of compliance and so we removed all copies of Google Earth from all computers. And then we purchased licenses for Google Earth Pro for only those users who really relied on it. For a yearly per-user fee. And now apparently we can install it for everyone once again. For free. I wonder if Google realized that a lot of companies and government organizations were confused about licensing or ignorantly non-compliant or just gave up and tried some other program. I know in my department we already installed alternative software for most people. Although nothing is as nice or easy for exploring or creating KML files as Google Earth in my experience.
- gcb0 12y agonope. it is mostly because microsoft been offering those high quality aerial images for a long time on bing maps for free, but since nobody even know there is a bing map, it wasn't a threat. now somehow google feel they are gaining market and decided to counter attack.
- raverbashing 12y agoYeah, too bad Bing Maps search is a bad joke. Really You have to specify if it's a Address or a Place (if your initial search doesn't work, which is pretty much always)
- tazjin 12y agoWhere I live (Stockholm) Google Maps has become completely useless at finding anything. It used to be the case that you could search for the name of a store chain (e.g. Systembolaget - the state alcohol stores) and it would show some of their stores on a map around you, nowadays it picks some random one (never close to where you are) and displays that instead. The same thing has started happening for lots of places that it used to find before, that are now seemingly just gone. In the meantime Apple Maps has been consistently improving and is now my go-to maps application on the phone.
- tga_d 12y agoLinux support is pretty ambiguous. The download link says "Download Google Earth Pro for PC or Mac," the minimum specifications link gives specifications for Linux, the actual download gives you a binary called GoogleEarthLinux.bin, but when installed gives you an outdated (3 years) and non-pro copy of google earth.
- ianlevesque 12y agoWhich, if I recall correctly, is wine based too. What a mess.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dang 12y agoDiscussed earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8973020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8973020.
- Negative1 12y agoBeware -- this feels like an email fishing expedition. Sadly, I fell for it and got to the same screen everyone else gets too; poorly worded error with no key.
- chrissnell 12y agoGood, but it's still missing the one key feature that I really need: offline satellite imagery. I guide off-road driving adventures in the western deserts for groups of friends every year. Trip planning is done primary in Google Maps and USGS topos but I occasionally find myself out in the desert and needing to scout a route for a last-minute change but with no way of doing it without Internet and satellite imagery. Yes, it's possible to (legally) cache small amounts of imagery with the stock app but I really want the ability to cache larger areas at high detail. I would pay for this feature, up two a few hundred dollars.
- zytek 12y agoI use MotionX GPS and download data from MotionX Terrain maps (which are OpenCycleMaps), good for getting around where I live. You might check coverage on http://www.opencyclemap.org/ http://www.opencyclemap.org/
- maxerickson 12y agoThere's a whole ecosystem of software for building tile databases and viewing them on phones/tablets: http://mobac.sourceforge.net/ http://mobac.sourceforge.net/ There's also a bunch of "WMS Viewers" that you can point at National Map endpoints (which shouldn't have any licensing issues): http://raster.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services http://raster.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services I've never had a use for them so I don't know if one works well and has nice caching features.
- matt4077 12y agoMobac works great, although you have to do a bit of editing of configuration files to get it to work with non-free sources like google maps. I've used it create maps for long bicycle trips in SE Europe. A highest-detail map of the balkans is about 1GB. I used Galileo Offline Maps to render it on an iPhone.
- chrissnell 12y agoInteresting but it looks like the one iOS client for Mobac is geared towards vector maps, not the satellite imagery.
- irq 12y agoThe picture in the page, btw, is of downtown Portland, OR. That's the Willamette river. A fun place to look at in Google Earth.
- gulfie 12y agoyes, but when will it stop crashing?
- barrkel 12y agoIndeed, I got a pure virtual function call within 3 minutes of zooming around.
- jhansen858 12y agoglad i just paid the $400 like a month ago.
- uptown 12y agoRequest a refund, or see if you can dispute the charge with your credit card if they offer any type of price-protection.
- oori 12y agoare google dev working on PC machines? what's up with Retina support?
- zx2c4 12y agoCan we get proper Linux support, please? The current Linux situation with Google Earth is a joke -- 3 years old, crashes, based on wine, no pro features.
- RobSis 12y agoFortunately, the Windows version of Pro works perfectly in wine.
- zx2c4 12y agoGreat to know, thanks. Was there anything fancy needed to get it running or did it just run?
- RobSis 12y agoNothing fancy. Wine 1.7, glsl, gdi & fbo.
- ensignavenger 12y agoI tried to download the Windows version to run it under wine and it gave me the Linux bin. I will have to put a bit more effort into it and give it now that someone has confirmed that it works :) Thanks.
- RobSis 12y agoYeah, it won't give you windows version unless you change user-agent. Here's list of all possible downloads: https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/earth/qGeaQ3LQYEs/vfGwAfLzUFAJ https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/earth/qGeaQ3LQYEs/vfG...
- ensignavenger 12y agoThanks! I figured changing the UA would do the trick, but that link is even better :) It works beautifully.
- 12y ago
- cynsad 12y agoBecause it is worthless
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- UserRights 12y agoAnybody knows a good alternative to this that runs without trouble on Ubuntu and Arch 64 bit Linux machines? Nothing in AUR and I do not feel like hunting for PPA right now. Meanwhile it would be great if Google could provide a repository with a linux version that runs flawlessly. Thanks!
- sorenjan 12y agoHow worried should I be that Google will discontinue Google Earth? It hasn't been updated in a long time, Google prefers web apps, and now this. I prefer native apps, and Google maps can't do everything Earth can do.