Google Earth for the web has been updated to support more browsers other than Chrome, including Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Opera. The release comes after Google kicked off the public beta in June of last year for bringing Google Earth to these browsers.
The Google Earth team says today"s launch was made possible with WebAssembly, which is used by developers to bring native code to the web. However, Safari is an exception since it lacks full support for WebGL2, which works to render interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without using plug-ins.
Google originally rolled out the web-based version of Earth in 2017 and ditched the desktop version since then. However, it was initially available on Chrome only since it launched with the Chrome-only Native Client (NaCl) technology. For the past five years, Google has been contributing to web standards like WebAssembly in order to bring Earth to as many browsers as possible.
Regarding Earth"s Chrome-only availability over the past three years, the Earth team explained in a blog post:
"This is because it was built using Native Client (NaCI), which was a Chrome-only solution. Back then, this was the only way we could make sure that Earth would work well on the web. Much has changed since that time and WebAssembly has emerged as the leading open standard, with browser support maturing greatly over the past few years."
The team says it will continue working to polish your experience across all these browsers and add support for Safari in the future.