Google Earth now runs on Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge thanks to WebAssembly

Written 12 months ago by IanDorfman

The development team behind Google Earth has now made it possible to run the virtual globe app on web browsers other than the company's flagship Small Google Chrome iconGoogle Chrome.

In a post on the team's official Medium blog, Google Earth Software Engineer Jessi Beck and Tech Lead Manager Jordon Mears describe how this development took 5 years to achieve. During this time, the Google Earth development team ported the app to W3C's Small WebAssembly iconWebAssembly native code web porting standard from the Chrome exclusive Native Client.

Following a 6-month beta testing period, Small Google Earth iconGoogle Earth is now officially available for Chrome as well as Small Mozilla Firefox iconMozilla Firefox, Small Microsoft Edge iconMicrosoft Edge, and Small Opera iconOpera. gHacks notes that Earth also loads in Small Brave iconBrave and Small Vivaldi iconVivaldi, albeit noticeably slower than on the browsers Google has listed as officially supported.

The development team will continue to work on optimizing the current, more openly available version of Google Earth, as well as implement support for Small Safari iconSafari. The web-based version of Google Earth can be accessed by going to https://earth.google.com/web/ .

Further coverage:
Google Earth developers via Medium
Engadget
gHacks Tech News