'The Earth in Your Pocket'

That's how developers at Google describe the release of Google Earth for the iPhone. Boing Boing's Joel Johnson wonders why it wasn't released for Android first.

1 minute read

October 27, 2008, 11:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


"With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of our 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:

• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain

• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world

• View geo-located Wikipedia articles

• Use the 'Location' feature to fly to your current location

• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search"

From Boing Boing:

"I mean, I get it: Google is a big company. There are lots of product teams. Those teams probably have a lot of autonomy. Google is fine making software for all platforms, not just its own, since their customers use a variety of platforms.

But we're not talking about Gmail here. We're talking about a stunning bit of entertainment software that would set Android phones apart from their competition. And then Google Mobile distributes it for iPhone first?"

Thanks to gadgets.boingboing.net

Monday, October 27, 2008 in Boing Boing

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