Google Earth is a software tool that puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop.

View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Here are some key features of "Google Earth":

· 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.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

Enhanced search, including support for:
· Clearer local business and directions search results. These now appear in full HTML in the left hand panel.
· Improved quality thresholds on search results.
· Walking directions, biking directions and transit search.
· Search layers in local business searches. In a local business search, you now see all relevant results in the 3D view, 10 results in the search panel.
· Suggest in search. As you type a search query, search suggestions appear in a drop-down menu.
· Loading search results with one click, not two.

Improved imagery rendering, including:
· Google Earth imagery is significantly more seamless, especially at higher altitudes
· Fade-in animation for imagery as it is fetched.
· Anisotropic filtering by default.
· Improved level of detail calculation for imagery tiles.
· Unified network stack. Google Earth now uses the same network stack for imagery, vector content, balloon content and embedded browser content. This will avoid situations where imagery loads ...