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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this. Google are basically old Microsoft at this point.

I really liked having a separate application to open for Google Earth instead of a browser. I take it this won't be an option any more?

Chrome allows you to turn any website into it's own app, but saving a website such as Google Earth to your bookmarks then drag that to chrome://apps and right click on it and choose Open Full Screen and create short cut. So it will you will be able to open it like an app and find it in spotlight/alfred and you can still use chrome for websites separately.

An "app". Just a glorified browser page without chrome. You can achieve the same thing with a shortcut.

Somebody will probably create an Electron app that wraps the web app, just like with Google Play Music

Fortunately yes, it is.

> Of course, you can still access and download Google Earth 7 for desktop

https://blog.google/products/earth/welcome-home-new-google-e...

Chrome-only and that's if there's no bug. I have the latest version of Chrome on Ubuntu but my GPU (GTX 960m, latest drivers) is blocked and the --ignore-gpu-blacklist flag doesn't work.

Seems to fail for me on Chrome on all my OSX machines. Colleague on windows/chrome it works fine..

> Embrace and Extend the web with Chrome only apps like this.

Depends on the reason for "Chrome only" - if they use (upcoming) standards not supported so far by other browsers I see no harm in it. Other browsers will catch up in time.

It uses Native Client, but seems that at some time development of NaCl had been stopped[1] so it's strange that new Google product still uses this technology. Maybe they'll port it to Webassembly later. Or maybe plans had changed and they're betting on NaCl, Talk plugin and other activexey stuff.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=239656...

It indeed doesn't work on Firefox (when switching user agents).

Doesn't seem like it's doing much in Chromium neither, just showing a static page: http://imgur.com/a/Q00OI

Doesn't seem to work in Vivaldi either :(

Nor Opera

To what, if any, extent is Chrome itself collecting user browsing data? That is part of Brave's business model -- there are many things about your behavior only the browser can know. Is Chrome doing the same?

Google has already said other browser support is coming soon.

So I guess your little analogy doesn't work anymore.

>Get the new Google Earth now on the web in Chrome; on Android as it rolls out this week; and on iOS and other browsers in the near future. (Of course, you can still access and download Google Earth 7 for desktop.)

It looks like a very good shinny little toy to convince those who have not Chrome installed yet that Chrome is a good browser.

It surely is, but for me, it seems weird that a huge company like Google will give you these marvelous toys for free and they don't take anything in exchange.

What I mean is that putting people in a g-bubble like this is bad. I also wonder what the shinny 3 dimensional thing can add as a value to a standard map. In term of education for example: people don't even know how to read a map without a GPS and a map app now. I don't say that map apps are bad, but I don't know...

* They didn't know how to read maps before

* They still can't read maps and gps today, they just follow instructions

chrome is free, fast to download, runs on most platforms, and in no way forcing you to use it exclusively. It's not like they're asking you to download an .exe with direct3d drivers. you think they need to support microsofts 30 browsers or shouldn't release at all?

It's not bitching, I just think as a professional I'd be required to launch products with requisite browser support and I don't have the resources of Google. The whole point of Web Standards and the Open Web have been made numerous times and if this was Microsoft requiring Internet Explorer in 2017 I'm sure they'd get pilloried.

I'm not seeing how this is different than an Intranet site requiring Internet Explorer or a video site requiring Flash. Unless you believe that Internet Explorer and Flash are "Bad" and Chrome is "Good"?

not a bad point, but I think web standards and open web apply to most content. if you're pushing the envelope in what a browser can do for a flagship product, that becomes exponentially hard to support.

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