New and Better Views of Natural Geography on Google Maps

Today, Google released new visual improvements to the base maps in Google Maps. The improvements include new representations of terrain, vegetation, and land formations. The new base layer reminds me quite a bit of what you would typically find in a flat wall map. It also reminded me of the base layer in the National Geographic Map Maker.

Applications for Education
For a couple of years now you have been able to use "Earth view" in Google Maps. The Earth view provides a great look at the physical geography of the Earth, but running the Google Earth plug-in can be quite CPU intensive on some computers and if your school doesn't allow you to install plug-ins that view is inaccessible to you. Today, Google took a step toward resolving those issues.