Recently I was at a farmer’s market in Tahoe City. There was a farmer who was proudly showing his customers pictures of his farm- they were satellite views taken from Google Earth and printed in color. He said, ‘this is from Google Earth – it’s really cool and it only takes about 20 minutes to download.’ Obviously the farmer did not have broadband access at his home, but he was so thrilled with the application that he was evangelizing the technology while selling his organic produce. To me it was a perfect example of how pervasive the Internet is in daily life, even for an organic farmer in a rural area.
I’m also a big fan of Google Earth, and found that I’m not alone- ‘google earth’ was the #10 search term entered into Google for the four weeks ending October 1, 2005. And Google Maps is now the #3 site after Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest in our Travel – Maps category, taking a 10.5% share of visits to the category for the week ending October 1. The satellite/map hybrid option is the coolest way to find out where you’re going and what it’s going to look like. I’m addicted.