Any Google Earth fans out there? Good. Now how about Google News fans as well? Excellent. Ever thought how cool it would be if you could combine the two? No, neither had I to be absolutely honest. However, this kind of maps and events mashup is something that has been happening for some time now. Myself and a mate even created something using Google Maps and BBC traffic news a couple of years ago that did just that, overlaying traffic reports onto a Google Map of the UK. All quite cool and interesting at the time, although now a long since forgot about project. Oh yes, back to the point of this posting. Well now it seems that Google itself has gone and produced a Google News layer for Google Earth.

According to the most superbly named Brandon Badger, Product Manager at the Google Earth and Maps team (seriously, you couldn’t make it up) the launch of Google News on Google Earth is “a milestone in the evolution of the geobrowser. By spatially locating the Google News’ constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide.”

It allows you to zoom into areas of personal interest and peruse headlines of national, regional and, when fully zoomed in, even the most local of interest. Which really is remarkable, in my never humble opinion.

All you need to do to start exploring the news as never before is fire up Google Earth, head for the layers menu and expand the gallery node to reveal the Google News layer. Once the checkbox has been ticked you can zoom around to wherever you are interested in news happenings.