Google Earth has landed onto the Moon!

Yesterday for the 40° anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the surface of the moon in 1969, folks at Google presented a new Google Earth feature: The Moon.

Someone once called Google Earth the most revolutionary geographic tool after the invention of the compass. Maybe it's not correct to compare it to instruments which played a huge role in human history but to call it revolutionary isn't exaggerated at all. After all, if we compare it to a chart or a globe, it's the first time in human history that people have access to such a huge amount of geographic information well organised, easy accessible and of outstanding quality for free. Think about it. Thanks to Google a remote school of a poor area of the world just need an internet connection to have access for free to this wonderful teaching tool.

Surely Google is one more time demonstrating how its business model is such that is able to mine gold with one hand and returning the same amount of benefit to the community (mankind) with the other one.

The presentation of this new plug in the Google Universe took place yesterday at Washington D.C. Newseum.

The Moon in Google Earth will show by clicking the planet icon in 5.0 version of the program. From there you will be able to follow the various Apollo mission, looking and pictures and movies footage, analysing chart and, if you feel you're getting lost, view movie tutorials featuring astronauts and actors as your guide to this amazing new feature of Google Earth.
To grab the last version of Google Earth containing the moon just click here.
Here below a video of astronaut Buzz Aldring exploring GE.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHJ77RsnFXI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgoogleblog.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F07%2Fexplore-moon-in-google-earth.html&feature=player_embedded]
Picture and video are copyright of Google Inc. They are here reproduced under the terms of the Fair Use.