Ok then, as we can all see here, Google is doing something that is helping the Open source community! Three cheers!

maps.google.com - stop the bitching.

ironicly google servers run *nix systems, or am i wrong in that point?

Hey, folks, check out on

http://earth.google.com/earth_fusion.html
and
http://earth.google.com/earth_server.html

These things only run on Linux (SuSE to be exact). It means they DO recognize *NUX systems, at least as a professional platform

Tymon, I love you! You just brought up a point that really means this: All of you whiners: SHUT UP about Google being Windows Only! They do acknoledge us in other ways! So Rejoice.

"And yes, we do are millions, "

sorry...but that just struck me as incredibly funny...

Has anyone seen the movie The Corporation? The director of that movie is very careful to make a distinction between calling a corporation "evil" and calling it "amoral and dangerous."

Truth is that believing corporations are evil is too simplistic and almost not cynical enough. A true commitment to evil involves having principles and sticking to them (warped principles, granted, but principles nonetheless). Corporations sometimes do things to benefit the community. Sometimes they do things to harm the community. Sometimes donations are a tax write-off. Sometimes they're good public relations. Google is neither evil nor good. Google is Google. Some of the things it does benefit the global community. Some of the things it does harm the global community.

Every large corporation is ultimately motivated by profit, though.

EFF google search result

^ Is a search on EFF about google.

Ironicly enough, EFF PAYS google to have their search engine feature on their site.

Pretty funny.

*crosses fingers*

I do believe that you are out.

Good phrase for a signature

can i just say one small thing

The three largest operating system groups in the world are Microsoft, Macintosh and Linux (not in any order)

before anyone shouts at me, most of the time when i say Linux, I refer to anything remotley related to the penguin and the open source operating project so apps like Unix, SuSE, BeOS Slackware (and the other 200 odd of them)

i do feel yers it would have been nice for them to say "currently linux is not supported, there are currently no future plans to change this"

but we have to face the fact that there are indeed alot of companies that wont acknowledge the existnce of linux or related apps, and that like it or not, noone has to either. Sure there is a huge number of people taking to linux but it is still a dramatic minority (in some cases at least)

theres no requirment for anyone to even mention ANY os, so lets take a step back and look at it, in a different manner

This isnt a problem,. its an opportunity for us to show just how good we are and say "hey, look, we cost NOTHING and we made their program work, we made all these programs work" lets get linux on the names of everything, on the back of every propriatry device that ever comes out

the only way we are going to do that is if we view little things like this as an opportunity, to get up, shout about it and say look! we can do it too!

Opportunities are everywhere, If a company like google wont acknowledge it (which im not saying they will or wont), so what?. Sod em! The Open source community is strong enough to get up and say "ok, we'll do it better then"

I agree with your post but only applying it to a general point of view. But in the particular case of Google Earth there are some statments which are (or seems to be) wrong;

AFAIK Google Earth uses the QT library. Google itself is a Linux-based enterprise and also sponsor of a variety of proyects. I would say that Google is one of the mayor breeders of the actual FOSS movement.

Why would Google then decide not to support something which is already half ported (QT) and to operating systems (at least Linux) which they use and develop for?

It seems that there are other reasons to restrict the OS choice of Google Earth, as you can read here there is also no support for Win98, 98SE and ME, which still are a real big userbase, surely larger than the Linux, *BSD and Mac users toghether.

But.... Why not ask Google themselves?:

The answer to the Linux-support question is simply that they haven't had time to do but one version for a single architecture and postposed the rest for a later date. That's all.

Isnt there free alternatives at various websites where you can get sat images anymore?
I used them in the past without haveing to downloading anything.

As said above,google to me(as well) means "search"!
I only use google for search and probably will only use them for this.

I'm personally not specially interested, but AFAIK there are sites where you can grab not only sat images, but also maps with which you can render 3D models...

Oh! In this case you will miss Web 2.0 !!! Web 2.0 is the future of mankind, we will develop a collective intelligence and subscribe 'en masse' to Wired News and Cosmopolitan and get a telepathic interface to Flikr and Blogger and there will be strippers and a beer volcano... ups, sorry, the latter is from a different story. ^_^