Live from GeoWeb 2006, a contributor writes:

[Google Earth CTO] Michael Jones said he’d been up all night writing position papers because Google will be posting all of Lebanon later today.

They are expecting that there might be a reaction to the seemingly one-sided information.

If that’s confirmed (nothing yet, as of this writing around 60% of Lebanon is in high resolution, and none of it from 2006) that would be an impressive and quick response to current events. Applications like Google Earth become especially valuable if they are able to rapidly reproduce new “facts on the ground” in cases of natural disasters or wars.

That said, I can imagine Michael Jones must be apprehensive about wading into this conflict in an region where nuance or neutral information is always construed by both sides as abetting the enemy. Still, we’ve already seen the perspective from the ground on TV. Let’s see the perspective from the air. The more information the better.