The Bottom Line

Google Earth is an incredibly feature-rich application. Even if you're just a casual user, you can have lots of fun zooming into specific locations, doing route fly-bys, and the like. The program's 3D capabilities take basic mapping to a new leveland provide added functionality.

Tip

Google Earth also lets you add your own overlays to the built-in maps, in the form of custom layers. If you're using Google Earth Plus or Pro, you can also import spreadsheet data to create points of interest. There's not enough space in this chapter to go into these custom functions; consult the program's help file for detailed instructions.

Bottom line? I like Google Earth a lot. I don't use it for all my mapping needs (Google Maps is just fine for most things, to be honest), but when I want an added bit of realism, it's the way to go. It's certainly worth your time and money (it's free, remember) to give it a look.