Google Earth gains the ability to measure distance and surface area

Google Earth is (re)gaining the ability to measure distance and surface area with a new tool, the company announced today with a blog post.

The tool allows users to measure the distance between two points on the globe or the surface area of a region. It's adequately clever as well, allowing for the ability to move the borders of a selection and change it into whatever irregular shape one would want to measure.

Google says that this was a highly requested feature, but perhaps that’s because the desktop version has offered a similar tool for more than a decade. Google turned Earth Pro into the standard version for desktop in 2015, and began offering it for free. That's still available if you are looking for something more sophisticated and feature-rich.

Still, it’s good to have this feature available on the more common versions; the tool is available on the web – which only works in Chrome, for now –, and Android starting today, with an update for iOS “coming soon.”