14 DAY TRIAL // Google takes no shortcuts when it comes to offering its users the stamp of high quality for its products. Over the past few weeks, we've seen a number of updates released for the Google Earth application. Google's mapping solution can provide users with satellite imagery of various locations and landmarks found on Earth. All of the recent updates are meant to increase the quality of Google's products and even provide support for various humanitarian actions that have been taking place.
As promised at the Where 2.0 conference last week, Google Earth now features a new layer, dubbed Google News. The layer can be found under the Gallery layer folder and has been developed to provide users with articles from the Google News service, which relate to a specific zone of interest. Once you turn the layer on, you will see placemarks that include the headline for a story. Opening the placemark will grant you access to the original. The new upgrade actually brings Google News to Google Earth, offering users a better experience when reading the news.
The interesting thing about the new Google News layer is the way it brings out the news. It appears that searching for a specific location brings out the news articles of that specific location, thus making the Google News service extremely accurate. There are also rumors according to which the new feature will be available in many languages, offering more news per individual location. Future plans include the Google News layer being brought to Google Maps, which is accessible to any user with an Internet connection.
If a specific zone has more related news, then Google Earth is going to display a spiral of placemarks for each story, or a single placemark that branches out into several placemarks with related headlines. The new layer comes a few days after Google Maps has been empowered with links to Wikipedia and Panaramio.
