Google announced Wednesday that its mobile version of Google Maps is going offline, Street View is going off road with a new backpack-sized camera, and Google Earth will soon be serving up eye-popping new 3D imagery that you'll be able to "fly" above.
News of the Google Earth and Maps upgrades come a week before Apple is expected to dump Google as its default mapping technology on its iOS mobile platform. In a world where location-based services are becoming more popular and lucrative this is bad news for Google. Perhaps Google's intent was to show Apple what it was going to miss. And it did.
Eye Popping 3D Fly Overs
Google’s Google Earth team has been working hard over the past year to add “fly-over” capability to the product. Product manager Peter Birch demonstrated the new functionality by flying over some well known spots in San Francisco and viewing various angles of City Hall, Coit Tower and the Embarcedero.
