What the Google Earth and the Google Earth Community are

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Although its name includes the word "Earth", Google Earth (GE) is a digital application on Google servers that simulates a sphere. Google staff covers the sphere with satellite and aerial images of a planet. With the terrain information applied, the virtual sphere is converted to a view that shows how the planet we have chosen looks like. With the features such as daylight, weather, and marine effects, the planet view becomes a virtual planet. Each of these group of data is uploaded to an individual integrated layer so that users can load any information on the server they wish and/or zoom to to their client GE. Although off-topic here, it is worth to mention that GE's zooming technology is another revolution its founders have introduced to the world of software engineering.

Google Universe?

For the time being, it has modes of Earth, Sky, Mars, and Moon. Among them, Sky is different and is the reverse view of Earth.

Historical developments of this application has proven that Google intends to simulate all the planets (and, perhaps the other spatial bodies) that humankind has information about and has experience/memories with.

Therefore naturally, the biggest experience is with the Earth mode. The integrated layers allow every kind of data with geodetic datum to be displayed on the application with the help of kml files (the abbreviation of "Keyhole Markup Language"). Google continuously adds official data to its layers for the benefit of its users ranging from daily consumers to professional operators in various sectors. Some of such famous layers are geographic features, countries, borders, populated areas, roads, street views, banks, pharmacies, models, and so on.

the Community

Keyhole Inc., the founder of Google Earth, and likewise Google Inc., have always been aware of the fact that official data is not the only information humanity has. People's contributions with their placemarks, compilations, explanations, comments, experiences, foundings and the replies to such contributions have been added to a special layer called the Google Earth Community Layer as a public data visible to everyone using GE. Where these contributions were made was a forum called Google Earth Community. The forum soon became more populous than many nations on Earth and received a large scale of valuable and informative posts about our planets/moon/sky, our global history, and culture. Catching out bugs, finding out data problems, creating tools for use of Google Earth, inspiring professional and educational applications were some of the other aspects that the Community fulfilled.

Nevertheless, the main achievement was that of helping people's understanding of the World to expand -at least ours, the members of the Community, did so. Same applies to the next generations to help them have a greater vision. Seer, the co-founder of everything about and around Google Earth, did put it at the very beginning of the whole story so correctly:

You will find that hours enjoyed with Google Earth and the Community posts offer greater understanding of the world and its people than that developed in a lifetime of education, conversation, reading, and television. This is a common experience for Google Earth users. Also common is the realization after a few months' enjoyment that many features and subtle powers of Google Earth and the Google Earth Community were at first overlooked.

Board moderators and administrators continuously checked member works in details, picked up member works and explanations that almost fully fulfilled the expected good content that teaches a lot about the topic created, and collected them in a special area what the administrators called "Moderator Selected" that has since then been becoming a huge and excellent information center by Community members.

"Swift to" Home

In 2012 when the forum software was broken down, Google decided to move the forum to Google Groups for security reasons in order to keep the so-valuable Community efforts build up for years alive. Unfortunately, Google Groups was a technical messaging board and was incapable to meet the requirements of the Community to continue the work. As a response, Google engineers in Google Earth and Google Groups departments spent time to convert the Google Groups software into a real humanely-looking forum with that many sub-forums and tools needed. However, Google Groups was also evolving and the result was a much longer time spent on becoming a true Community in Google Groups. So much that, the associated engineers were diverted from their main corporate mission.

Back to the High Seas

After two years of struggling, in the first quarter of the year 2015, Google decided to freeze the forum so to stop hosting the forum as an active place for people to act in. Accordingly, the Google Earth Community layer in GE was to be frozen.

Having worked with the excellent members for years as part of the Google Earth Community, the moderators started up this board you are viewing at this very moment, in order to let people continue to share the information they have and enjoy learning from others in a truly friendly environment.

There is less to say what the Community is all about. Because, if you have read this text until this moment, you are already ready to check out and experience what thousands of people have been doing here (see the Google Earth Community Forum on Google Groups). Everyone is welcome to start new topics or to contribute to existing topics here as long as they go along with the general forum rules that are valid in every respectful forum. The only additional condition is that the topic to be posted here be illustrated in Google Earth, and be a written material by the member themselves (that is, not copies from elsewhere) which will be valuable in future. Every one of us must never forget that Community members here are willingly sharing what they privately own with everyone for their benefits and fun. Therefore, they deserve a lot of thanks.

Please, enjoy first the works already shared, observe what can be done here and in Google Earth, watch out how you can present here the information you have in your mind to share with the world... Then, you too will feel part of the Community.