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January 4, 2007
Google Earth Road Layers Falling Behind
For some reason, the Google Earth Road layers haven't been staying synchronized with Google Maps. The only exception in the last few months I'm aware of is when Japan was added to both in September. During the last few months, Google Maps has added detailed road maps for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Brasil. None of these locations are available with detailed road maps in Google Earth. I guess the process to convert road layer information into the vector format needed for GE is requiring more work. Either that or there are some sort of licensing issues. But, Google isn't saying what the issue is - I've asked. At least residents in these locations can turn to Google Maps - however, on another rant: Google Maps still doesn't provide a button to view the current location in Google Earth! Why is that?
Posted by FrankTaylor at January 4, 2007 3:24 PM
Comments
Posted by: seth at January 4, 2007 4:55 PM
Hi Frank!
That's quite a issue there.
I've been wondering the same everytime Google updates their imagery on G.Earth.
Maybe now that you talked about it on your blog, due to your amazing work, and from what i can tell (Google gives credit to your work :D), changes might happen...
Thank you for your dedication to GE :)
Posted by: João Castro at January 4, 2007 8:02 PM
Might we somehow organize a community-created Google Maps page? One that does a better job of interpreting KML files? One that has the link button you would like to see? Or is this job best left to Google? Just a thought...
Posted by: Bill Clark at January 5, 2007 1:36 AM
Amen, brother. Especially when viewing more rural areas here in Australia, I'm aching for the detailed road maps in Google Maps to appear in Earth. I often have to open them side-by-side to get the right coordinates when geotagging my photos using Google Earth and Picasa.
Posted by: Kevin Yank at January 5, 2007 1:49 AM
Bill, there are several public Google Maps mashups which have links to KML (my favorite is Tagzania.com which also has URL-based capability to go straight to GE). But, it is my opinion that Google Maps and Earth should be better integrated. It seems totally wrong that you can't go from one to the other - built-in. And, that only scratches the surface. All of the Google products should be better integrated.
Posted by: Frank Taylor at January 5, 2007 7:24 AM
Frank, I am living in Cairo and no good maps of the whole of the city are available. Are you aware of any good maps. Can I help to create a map (using GE)?
Posted by: Maarten at January 7, 2007 3:43 AM
Hi
I am doing research in the field of remote sensing and GIS, i want to know - shall we convert the data layers in google earth like roads layer to shapefile format,
Is it possible, if means what method
Posted by: kavitha at May 28, 2008 6:15 AM
Frank, Do you or others know where I can find either Google earths rural mexico roads layer or another source for rural roads? I am also interested in high res photography for northern MX; if someone knows of a source... I need the data to do sampling designs for grassland birds.
Posted by: Duane at June 28, 2010 11:39 AM
Great piece.. wondering though whether the ones in east africa can be mapped as well..we have many of those roads here..
Posted by: Craig at May 13, 2011 5:29 AM
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also, the maps served using the google maps api are old than those served at maps.google.com. both in the map data & the satelite imagery.