At Google I/O, Google unveiled the Google Earth API and browser plug-in. As the latest member of the Maps API family, the Google Earth API allows web developers to quickly and easily turn their web pages into 3D map applications. They can now use the Earth as their canvas and apply their creative vision to a geographically rich, 3D environment, leveraging the same technologies Google uses in the desktop Google Earth client.

More and more users are interested in seeing the world’s information in a geographic context, which has lead to the rise of the Geoweb, a collection of user-generated content (e.g. photos, videos and so on) associated with a given location. Its not just about sharing pictures of a family vacation anymore. Now people can visually convey the miles logged while traveling to Patagonia or the Seychelles Islands, for example.

Key features of the new API include:

* Embed Google Earth inside any web page with only a few lines of code.
* Use the JavaScript API to enable rich Earth-based web applications.
* Manipulate KML and the 3D environment: create polygons, lines, placemarks, and more.
* Convert the existing Google Maps API site to 3D with as little as one line of code.
* View the thousands of existing 3D buildings, or add own 3D models.
* Switch to Google Sky mode for high-res imagery of stars, planets, and galaxies.