Google Earth now works in browsers beyond Chrome

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.