So you are touring Delhi. You are stuck in a traffic jam in Connaught Place and you have to be at Siri Fort Auditorium in half-hour. How will you reach there? Got any ideas? No?
So you just moved to Kolkata. You are wondering what is the distance between the Howrah Bridge and Victoria Memorial and how do you reach there?
So you want to go from LA to San Francisco. What speedway must you choose? Where can you stop for a brief snack?
You just started dating this beautiful girl during your stay in London and you want to take her out to a candle-light dinner. Where can you go? How would you reach there?
The answer to all of these and many more hows, wheres and whens can be found courtesy Google Earth. For those of you wondering what Google Earth is, well it is a software that lets you zoom in on perhaps any and every corner of the world and shows you the exact map of the place. This feature packed software is just one of the many new innovations that Google has launched in a short span of time.
If you are looking for driving directions from place A to place B in a big city like New York then this is the software for you. You can find a very precise map of the city so much so that you can actually look at the top of the buildings and other man-made and natural structures. At the same time, if you are looking for a coffee shop, shopping mall, hospitals, corporate offices, schools and colleges or just about any local business then you can find them marked with a high accuracy. Plus, this software provides you with population, crime and other statistics about the place that you are viewing. Google has done extensive research while mapping most cities on Google Earth.
Getting to within one kilometre of a place is very simple. Just key in the place?s ZIP code or PIN code and the software automatically spins its globe and zooms in to the place. At random I keyed in a ZIP code and it spun and zoomed in to a street in Fremont, California. Pretty cool, isn?t it? What?s more, you can even set zoom and tilt levels to actually come down and stand on the earth surface and look around almost as if you were standing in the neighbourhood.
The Downsides
Most world cities are not mapped as extensively as those of Europe and the US. For instance, when I typed in ?New York? in the search box, it zoomed in to New York and showed me the neighbourhood properly marked to such an extent that I could actually find coffee shops located near the Empire State Building.
But when I typed in ?Delhi?, it led me to Delhi alright, but there was hardly any mapping except some important places of interest like the IGI Airport, the Rashtrapati Bhavan and some nearby towns. Being a Delhiite, I further zoomed in and without the mappings, I was able to follow a line of the Delhi Metro track and then I managed to zoom in to the top of my apartment block!
Similar was the case when I typed in ?Mumbai?, where it lead me to a point in South Mumbai and on further scanning, I could see Mahim beach and Thane in its vicinity. Likewise, ?Kolkata? yielded a very dull, almost unrecognizable map although North and South Dum Dum were clearly marked. I tried to look up some smaller towns like Jaipur and Indore, but there was no record for them. Clearly, a lot needs to be done for this software to cover every nook and corner of the globe. My search for ?Muscat?, ?Singapore? and ?Hong Kong? too didn?t yield satisfying results.
The other downside of Google Earth is that its system requirements as recommended by Google are very high. I will write more about it later.
The Controversy
Some weeks back there was an article in print media about this software zooming in on top of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the article pointed at the potential security threat posed by this software. I must confess that it was the same article that made me curious about the software and I downloaded it. It was indeed true and I too managed to zoom in on top of Rashtrapati Bhavan and also saw an aerial view of the Mughal Gardens. How far the software is a threat from the security point of view remains to be seen though I have heard that certain countries including the US have requested Google to blot places of military installations and other high security zones like airports from the maps. What about India? I could see the runways of the IGI airport clearly marked on proper zooming in on the image of Delhi. It suggests that either India doesn?t consider Google Earth a security risk or India hasn?t done anything about it as yet.
Technical Specifications
You will need an alive and active internet connection as it downloads high quality images from the Google servers. A Broadband connection is recommended although it can work on a dial-up connection too.
Google Earth will run on Windows 2000 or XP with a P-3 500Mhz processor. It needs a minimum of 128MB RAM although 512MB is recommended. A screen setting of 1024 x 768, 32-bit true colour is mandatory. Hard disk requirements will vary from 200MB to 2GB.
Version Information
The free version comes as a downloadable file of about 11MB although many of the features are disabled or not available in it.
Google Earth Plus is an optional upgrade which can add a GPS device support for a fee of US$ 20.
Google Earth Pro is an US$ 400 annual subscription based version for professional and commercial users. More information on the same can be accessed from the website https://earth.google.com
The Verdict
I believe that like all other soft wares, this too has its limitations as I have discussed above. At the same time, I tend to look at the utility given by Google Earth to people who are stranded in alien cities and people who hop from one place to another frequently. Once the mapping of the entire earth is complete, Google Earth will be a tool that will help you find almost anything that is of your interest in your neighbourhood.
UPDATED - 19 Dec 2005
In recent times they have added info about some more cities of India like Lucknow, Indore, Jaipur, Agra and many others. Plus, cities like Mumbai and Delhi have been more clearly marked