In the early 2010’s when I was young. With a computer you really felt like the world is at your fingertips. With a HP Pavilion from 2009, I was browsing the internet and early YouTube.

Discovering Google Earth from my aunts house, it opened an entire new way for my younger self to explore the world. I’ve always loved geography and astronomy. So I’d explore every nook and cranny around the world, from the shoals of the Bahamas to the northern reaches of Kamchatka.

In this blogpost, I’d like to share and preserve some of my core memories of using old Google Earth, all compiled into one article for everyone to see.

🪐 Astronomy

There is a video on YouTube posted on 18th July, 2007 of the entire solar system on Google Earth. This of course merged two of my favourite interests at the time.

It is still accessible as of writing this article on the Google Earth Blog where you could render the entire solar system using a .KML file.

🦜 Pirates of the Caribbean

It’s not a hoax, but a marketing campaign at the time for the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Where using a .KML file, you could render several fictional islands to be rendered at South Eleuthera Marine Protected Area, just off the coast of Green Castle in the Bahamas.

It isn’t real but a great photoshop job!

👻 Secret Places on Google Earth

This was among my favourites; to discover quirky and unique places on Google Earth for me to see. Now before we continue, no I hate videos with clickbait thumbnails that show “I found 67 in the Amazon rainforest” (you get what I mean)

A YouTube channel showing this off back in the day is “mkbarth”. It wasn’t trying to be scary or clickbait-y like many modern YouTube videos. It is strictly informational and gives off old YouTube charm; still using copyrighted music which can’t be seen today!

Though there was a song he used on a video which has been long lost already, I am still trying to find it.

Visit his channel for a long nostalgia trip. I’m sure you could find something interesting!

📅 Modern Google Earth Content

Not all channels post brain rot Google Earth content, there is a good channel named thePOVchannel that makes more detailed video essays regarding curious spots of our world.

💬 Final Words

I would like to mention that I feel that Google Earth itself as a software feels neglected these days, this is very common of Google to axe services quickly such as Google+ and among others.

But a lot of the functionality of Google Earth has been stripped down from its older versions, and there probably isn’t a way to gain them back again.

The software itself has already been rebranded into “Google Earth Pro+”, yet the focus of the company seems to be centred on Google Earth in the browser (why exactly), or on mobile and VR platforms. I think this is a big loss for how powerful this tool is.

The only other competitor I could think of would be Apple Maps (though it is very limited except for showing weather data) and Bing Maps which is completely gone, and I would consider lost media.