Thanks largely to Google Earth, released by Google in 2005, finding information linked to geographical locations is becoming far easier. Now, earlier this month, Google unveiled new layers for Google Earth: collections of practical and educational resources related to specific places on the planet.

Icons linking to this mass of information--which is being provided by organizations such as the United Nations, the U.S. National Park Service, National Geographic, and Turn Here, a publisher of city guides--appear atop the Google Earth landscape with the click of a mouse.

Although details such as buildings, national boundaries, and road networks have long been a part of Google Earth, this new "featured content" material represents the website's first official attempt to build what might be described as a geographically indexed world encyclopedia.

MIT Technology Review