Google Earth Now Comes on Firefox, Edge and Opera Browsers
engine
4:39 pm on Feb 27, 2020 (gmt 0)
Google has said Earth now comes on on Firefox, Edge and Opera browsers, in addition to Chrome, thanks to WebAssembly. That only leaves one major browser out and that's Safari, which Google says it's working on.
WebAssembly seems to be the successor of the failed attempt in the past to use client-side Java applets. If Google was able to squeeze the Google Earth application into a WebAssembly program, then WebAssembly is certainly a versatile tool.
I am afraid it won't take long before parties with less noble intentions find the WebAssembly framework a useful tool to distribute their payloads.
tangor
2:29 am on Feb 28, 2020 (gmt 0)
The evil hearts are always hard at work to avoid doing honest work. (sigh)
lammert
7:55 am on Feb 28, 2020 (gmt 0)
WebAssembly is a system inside the browser which accepts code compiled by general-purpose compilers like C/C++ That is why it is fast enough to run Google Earth on it. But the problem is that the binary compiled code is more difficult to check for malicious intent than normal browser code which is in human-readable HTML or JavaScript.
What this move also shows is that Google is moving away from off-line tools. They sold SketchUp which was one of their largest off-line products in 2012. The AdSense Android app is scheduled for discontinuation in a few months and now they are axing off-line Google Earth.
