Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google
Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.
Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right
in. Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving
directions. Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.
Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own
annotations.
Google Earth lets you do smooth sailing flybyes of the entire Earth.
You can easily fly to any spot on the globe, by entering any associated
data, like street addresses, place names or lat/long coordinates. There
are overlays that put additional information on the map, like roads,
international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics,
schools, stadiums, any number of interesting stuff. You can do Local
searches in the program, with icons on the map and a display on the
side showing your results.
You can leave notes, called "placemarks" all over the map, so you
can remember where all sorts of places are. Searches and placemarks can
be saved as bookmarks in "My Places". Everything can be output in an
XML format called KML, that will allow the vast popularity of Google
Maps to continue in Earth. You can also email a JPEG of the map, or
send a KMZ file if you know the recipient has Earth installed.