Blog Post: Google Earth has become a forum for editorializing via Google Sketchup, a relatively new Google app that lets anyone make 3D images to add to maps generated using Google Earth. Google Earth's rendition of the locations of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks now may include some user-generated, 3D references to that day.
All the pointing to 9/11 is a sign of how Google Earth's become a forum for editorializing via Google Sketchup, a relatively new Google facet that lets anyone make 3D images to add to maps generated using Google Earth.
Looked at another way, the sometimes haunting 3D images demonstrate the beauty and challenge of letting consumers have a direct hand in the look and feel of an Internet-based feature. As with Google Earth, there's highs and lows.
Take the 9/11 references, for example. Many are tributes, or so it seems. Typical is the so far lone recreation of the World Trade Center's twin towers, which collapsed and killed thousands nearly five years ago.
It's at first startling, then moving to watch the featureless, ghost-like images appear as the Google Earth map of Manhattan resolves.
There's also 3D renditions of the Freedom Tower and other buildings that will eventually rise from the Twin Towers' site.
These versions are much more detailed, as if created to educate the eye to a future when the skyline's gap is filled. Again, it's all tasteful, moving and touches a nerve.
But there's also a lowest common denominator to be seen.
What else explains why someone offers up a representation of United Flight 93; essentially it's an airplane pointed downward. It can be added to versions of New York City after a search for the 'Empire State building'.
(Flight 93 crashed near Somerset, Pennsylvania, after an uprising by the hijacked passengers. Curiously, there are no 3D images on maps of Somerset, Pa.)
There's also a rather crude airplane that can be added to a map of Washington, D.C. after a search for White House. It's an obvious reference to Flight 93's intended target, the White House.
For more evidence of this 3D-editorializing facet to Google Earth, check out the $80 barrel of oil that hovers over a map of Washington, D.C.
It's easy enough to avoid all this 3D shenanigans for those offended or otherwise not curious enough.
But at the same time, a new rendition of Google Earth introduced June 12 seeks to introduce more people to the thrills and chills of creating 3D imagery, thus providing a means for more of this kind of soap box, 3D sentimentality.
For more on the Google Earth upgrade, see this previous Google Watch posting.
This article originally appeared on Ben Charny's blog, GoogleWatch.
