confused. Does Google still add user submissions to GE?

I was a member of the old keyhole forum, & I just joined over here. After reading all the fYI I am still confused. Does Google still add user submitted places to Google Earth? Like in the old days, when interesting places submitted to the forums were eventually crawled by the Google editors and added to all those millions of little blue "i" spots to Google Earth... Is that now shut down?

Feb 18, 2016 17:07:49 GMT sscheinfe said:

I was a member of the old keyhole forum, & I just joined over here. After reading all the fYI I am still confused. Does Google still add user submitted places to Google Earth? Like in the old days, when interesting places submitted to the forums were eventually crawled by the Google editors and added to all those millions of little blue "i" spots to Google Earth... Is that now shut down?

Hi sscheinfe To Google Earth Community


Those days are long gone, Google has disabled the Google Earth Community Layer.
Since this community is no longer part of Google, its a community on its own.
Yet since the GEC layer is no longer functional, people can still can create placemarks and
post them here as well share them with the community or with friends, family, and co-workers through social media.

What ET said is right(ish).

The Google Earth Community Layer in the Google Earth Viewer can still be enabled (it now comes under the Gallery heading) and you'll still see all the little blue "i"s.

However, the original Google Earth Community forum is now frozen.  You can still access it on a read-only basis, but you can no longer post to it.  Here it is.

This Forum, the (new) Google Earth Community Forums was formed by the Moderators of the original GEC when that was put on notice of closure in March 2015.

Although we are still on the best of terms with the original administration team at Google and are in regular contact, we are no longer under Google's wing, and are an independent body, dependent on members' donations.

At the moment any placemarks made in this forum are simply for fun, education, and sharing.  However, we remain hopeful that the GE team at Google will come to see that our posts could still make a worthwhile contribution to the GE Community Layer, so perhaps one day we might again see little blue "i"s on Google Earth originating from our efforts on this forum.

Cheers,

Frank