Where to, Dora?

When Google Map was upgraded years back to provide users an interactive roadside view of streets and nearly all places on Earth, we started seeing strange-looking cars with orbs on their roofs.

Those pods, that would have not looked alien in any science fiction movie, housed state-of-the-art cameras that panned 360 degrees to take footage of the surroundings as the vehicle traveled.

I have frequently gone back to the neighborhood where I grew up using Google Map, which opens with an aerial view before allowing you to swoop down like an eagle to the spot you want to check.

The program also provides traffic conditions and route planning for travel by car, bicycle, foot and air, while providing information on available public transportation.

While the street views are not real-time and while they may look distorted — stretched depending on the angle in which they were captured by those cameras — the photographic renderings serve their purpose well.

Tech-savvy journalists are among the main users of the upgraded Google Map with its street views.

For example, when robbers raided a bank in Binondo, Manila, a virtual trip to its location allowed a view of the bank’s façade and its environment that may have been factored in by the robbers in choosing it as a target.

And for those who want an “otherworldly” experience, Google Map also provides a surface view of Mars and the moon. They may not be at par with those taken by the US space agency NASA, but the Google Map pictures of Mars and the moon are way better than any you’d get from a backyard telescope.

Bought by the technology giant in 2004 from a small company, Google Map may have been predated by Google Earth by three years, but the Map quickly eclipsed Earth as an online map service.

Google Earth and Map, along with Waze, have all but driven into bankruptcy road-navigation companies that sold devices you attach to your vehicles and subscriptions to power the road-direction providing gadgets.

Technology can be a great equalizer and that’s the very reason why Elon Musk has been sending thousands of mini satellites into orbit to saturate every nook and cranny of Earth with fast Internet signal.

Yet, the biggest tech news this week is that Google Earth is far from dead and is now laden with a time-lapse feature that should rekindle the “explorer” in all of us.

Without going through the technobabble, the time lapse goes back to 37 years and takes advantage of the many photos taken of Earth by satellites orbiting the planet.

We can imagine students of geography, ecology and related fields taking advantage of this feature to look at 37 years of changes on Earth, of the polar ice caps melting and tumbling down into the ocean.

The loss of forest covers as seen from the nearly four decades of materials now available on Google Earth can knock sense into all of us into stopping environmental despoliation, in whatever way we can, before nature unleashes its wrath on us due to climactic changes spurring stronger typhoons and the like.

Using satellite images, city planners can look at how urban centers have developed into concrete jungles that are sprouting problems common to congested cities like Manila, Bombay and Tokyo.

Google says it will update the images for each of the next 10 years.

That may be its way of saying that unless more people discover the beauty of the program, it may just write it off or fold it into

Google Map.

For a tech enthusiast, I feel that Google Earth and Map serve different purposes that should make their continuing provision imperative for the company. What do you think, Dora?

“Using satellite images, city planners can look at how urban centers have developed into concrete jungles that are sprouting problems common to congested cities.

“While the street views are not real-time and while they may look distorted — the photographic renderings serve their purpose well.