In version 5.0, Google introduced Historical Imagery, allowing users to view earlier imagery. By contrast, images created with NASA's globe software World Wind use The Blue Marble, Landsat, or USGS imagery, each of which is in the public domain. on a personal website or blog) as long as copyrights and attributions are preserved.

Google allows non-commercial personal use of the images (e.g. Any derivative from Google Earth is made from copyrighted data which, under United States Copyright Law, may not be used except under the licenses Google provides. This creates the impression of three-dimensional terrain, even where the imagery is only two-dimensional.Įvery image created from Google Earth using satellite data provided by Google Earth is a copyrighted map. For much of the Earth, Google Earth uses digital elevation model data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. Imagery resolution ranges from 15 meters of resolution to 15 centimeters. Imagery is hosted on Google's servers, which are contacted by the application when opened, requiring an Internet connection. Google now uses Landsat 8 to provide imagery in a higher quality and with greater frequency. This was achieved by combining multiple sets of imagery taken from Landsat 7 to eliminate clouds and diagonal gaps, creating a single 'mosaic' image. In 2013, Google used datamining to remedy the issue, providing what was described as a successor to the Blue Marble image of Earth, with a single large image of the entire planet. Before the launch of NASA and the USGS's Landsat 8 satellite, Google relied partially on imagery from Landsat 7, which suffered from a hardware malfunction that left diagonal gaps in images.

The imagery is retrieved from satellites or aircraft. After zooming in far enough, the imagery transitions into different imagery of the same area with finer detail, which varies in date and time from one area to the next. Google Earth's imagery is displayed on a digital globe, which displays the planet's surface using a single composited image from a far distance.

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