Google Earth 4+

I have been using the Google Earth engine for about 2 years now and I have absolutely loved the app, but there are some wacky things to fix. I am writing this review about the new update, as I was scrolling around the small town I live at (Elko, NV) I was very unsatisfied about the new street view update, there were new images of the towns streets but there was so much a mix of images from years back that are still not updated and they make me very uncomfortable and I don’t understand why you can’t update the whole town in the same day. I know 3Ding buildings on Earth can be difficult but why can’t a town of 21,000 people be in 3D? I think it would be nice to have new images of my small town in 3D, the imagery and the time lapses of this app are great and I
Am in love with them but please fix things I mention in this review and try updating more often.

This update makes absolutely no sense and is a perfect example for app developers of what NOT to do - don’t dramatically change an app that worked great for years unless the changes clearly benefit users! These changes are not improvements! Why make a huge “Your projects” tab that takes up screen real estate without even giving us the option to completely hide it? My guess is that most mobile Google Earth users don’t even use projects regularly… I certainly don’t. Now I have this annoying UI element constantly taking up a ton of space where it can accidentally get tapped.

The slideshow for viewing photos is a complete downgrade because you can no longer zoom in on the pictures! The layers tab is cluttered. Searching now feels clunky. And what happened to the Voyager section where you could view different interactive pre-made stories like sea level rise, deforestation, etc?!

There are a couple new features I appreciate, but they could’ve easily been incorporated without changing the UI completely! I’m happy they gave more control over custom layers, made Timelapse easy to use, and made a toggle to show areas with 3D coverage. However, these things don’t compensate for the nonsensical UI/UX changes. Do better Google!

It takes a lot of disappointment for me to write reviews but this app is just so flat. It’s like they took what they were in the process of developing years ago and just threw it up without even looking at it for a quick review. I am terrible at geography and thought this would help me with a class I’m taking but I was mistaken. You can’t adjust any type of visual settings so if you zoom too far in on, say, China, you get a million different location names in English and Chinese and you can’t even see the land under all the text. Also, it would be really enjoyable (and easier on my old lady eyes) to be able to make borders bold or different colors or even cut out a region to view it individually. It is absolutely impossible to tell one country/state from the next with the impossibly thin tan line separating everything that, oh yea, is the same color that is used for most of the landscape. What a mess.

Overall really great concept but what I’m gathering from other reviews, the app particularly for iPad is super low quality compared to others. I now know that if I had a desktop I’d be able to look at the moon and mars so I feel really gypped now. And yes, even though I didn’t pay anything I still feel shortchanged.