14 DAY TRIAL // The two new additions to Google Maps' array of services have given wings to the questions regarding whether Google Earth has a future of its own or whether it will be dropped and remembered only as a father of the industry while on display in the Google Museum.
The terrain fly over feature that has long been available in Google Earth has now been implemented, on a smaller scale though, in Google Maps. You can now fly over a map and see the contour of the land without having to download and install anything, as you would have to if you had to use the prior. The second feature is the wiki-style collaboration between users to Google Maps, with the options to annotate places and share those notes with anyone of your choice. This is the mirrored image of the community contribution feature of Google Earth.
Two new features that actually turned out to be versions of older ones for a different application should at least draw the Warner Brothers' type of question mark over Google Earth's head, provided it were a person, and I'm imagining this in order for my idea to go through the logical filtering barrage.
Furthermore, the Mountain View based company isn't a software company (Picasa and a number of other small efforts aside). Google Earth requires a download in order to be usable, so make the connections there. Duncan Riley of TechCrunch.com says that "As Google Maps takes on more and more of the functionality of Google Earth the appeal of Earth must diminish. It also makes sense that Google would rather grow and sustain a web product over a software download. Google Earth will still be with us for some time to come, but how long is now up to Google, and I'm betting that Google is already looking at ending support sometime in the next year or two as Google Maps becomes everything Google Earth now is, but online and without the download." Think on that next time you use either of the two and decide for yourself if you think this is plausible.