Google has long offered a Pro version of Google Earth for $399 per year that includes some pretty cool extras not found in the free version. Now Rick Broida reports at Cnet that you can get Google Earth Pro absolutely free. All you have to do is download the installer, run it, then sign in using your e-mail address (as your username) and license code GEPFREE. Features include: Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure; High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution; Exclusive pro data layers with Demographics and traffic count; Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk; and Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. If you’ve ever been involved in a property dispute, you’ll know how acrimonious they can get. Google Earth Pro includes parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries. "Do you really need this? Probably not, as Pro was created with business/enterprise users in mind," writes Broida. "Let's be honest, [Google Earth Pro has] entertainment value that's virtually impossible to measure."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @01:22PM
On the other hand, Google seems to be going out of their way to make using their aerial imagery difficult.
It used to be that you could easily switch the angle of view by fiddling with a circular compass widget - it wasn't the best UI (Bing's is much simpler, just click on the N/S/W/E), but it was workable. Now you have to drag the map around and hope you get a new angle of view. It went from intuitive but clunky to barely discoverable and immensely frustrating.