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Google Earth now works in browsers beyond Chrome

Firefox, Opera and Edge can all take a good look at the planet.

Oscar Gonzalez Former staff reporter
Oscar Gonzalez is a Texas native who covered video games, conspiracy theories, misinformation and cryptocurrency.
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Oscar Gonzalez
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See your house from space even if you're not a Chrome user. 

James Martin/CNET

Google is sharing the planet with other browsers, literally. The search giant's aerial mapping service is now available on browsers other than its own  Chrome

Google Earth is accessible via Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers, according to a blog post Thursday from the Google Earth team. This official release comes after a six-month public beta. There are plans for supporting Apple's Safari browser, but no details on when that'll happen. 

Google Earth software engineer Jessi Beck and tech lead manager Jordon Mears, who wrote the blog post together, said that Google Earth for the web was built using Native Client, which only worked for Chrome. They credited WebAssembly, an open standard across multiple browsers to run software,  for allowing Google Earth to work on other browsers.

Google Earth launched in 2005. It required a desktop app or a browser plug-in until the web version was released in 2017.