downloaded Google Earth and have been playing with it today. the word to describe my feeling is, WOW!

it’s simply fantastic.

have heard of google earth for a while. google launched quite a lot products, some are closely related to search, some are not, at least in the surface. some are very interesting like google earth and gmail. 1GB email box, what an hard-to-imagine idea when all others were offering several MB! again, google made it. now competitors are following. google basically sets the standard again.

some products are not very useful for me. google desktop for instance, tried it, cool, fun, then removed. maybe because my desktop is not that messy yet, i know where to find what.

google talk does not even work on my computer. no intention to troubleshoot thou, not many people are using it yet.

but this google earth is really cool, fun, and useful. you see, everyone love travel, me too. but don’t have the time and money to travel around. but i want to see how the rest of the world look like. with google earth, i can see every building at orchard road, statue of liberty, tian’anmen square… right on my desktop.

not all images are hi res though. i cannot see the block im living in yet 🙂 i believe it will improve.

now think beyond the cool images. there is a huge advertising business there. i read that google earth can be installed on a car with GPS. what if the driver wants to know and search for “resturant nearby”? which one will be shown in google earth in the future? the one that pays to be listed! just like google adwords advertisers.

otherwise why did they develop this in the first place? for fun, showcase? i don’t think so.

think about it. currently most of adwords advertisers are online businesses, or shops with online marketing mindset at least. not much, compared with all businesses. with google earth, google opened a door to main stream advertising market. that’s a much bigger market.

maybe i’m wrong, they have other plans, much better plans. what i believe is, people in google are smart. they must have something in mind.