The size and amount of interesting new information about Google Earth available from around the web got to be a bit too much to append to the end of the original post, so here are the updates, collected into a new post. In this case, the most recent links are at the end.

Update – 21:50 UTC:

Google’s press release for Google Earth 5.0. One new thing not mentioned elsewhere:

Google Earth 5.0 is now available in 41 languages (previously 26): English (US), English (GB), French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Thai, Arabic, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Czech, Greek, Norwegian, Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Filipino, Slovenian, Serbian, Catalan, Latvian, Ukrainian, and Hindi.

The New York Times: Google Earth Fills Its Watery Gaps, which comes with some great color quotes from the main players.

The Guardian: Arctic in danger: Pen Hadow heads for North Pole to establish the facts:

Ocean in Google Earth will help make the fate of the Arctic Ocean and numerous other deep blue corners of our sapphire planet obvious to millions around the globe. The Catlin Arctic Survey, an expedition setting off later this month that I am leading to the North Pole, aims to provide crucial data on the state of the ice. We will make all of this information available via Google Earth. Our progress can be tracked on the web in great detail using the software.

Census of Marine Life (CAML) press release: Census of Marine Life and ocean in Google Earth bring ocean information to life

EveryTrail press release: EveryTrail Launches Tours in Google Earth. Yes, using the new touring feature.

National Science Foundation press release: The National Science Foundation Contributes to Newest Version of Google Earth

Ocean Conservancy press release: Ocean Conservancy Welcomes Ocean to Google Earth – New Tools Allow Users to Explore the Seas As Never Before

European Voice: EU joins Google’s effort to map oceans:

Some of the information provided by the Commission comes from a €4.25 million project run by the EU to map the seabed in European waters, known as the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET). The [European] Commission also intends to create an internet-based European Atlas of the Sea, which will be available later this year.

The Google Lat Long blog guest post by Sylvia A. Earle, Explorer-in-residence at National Geographic.

Google Earth Blog’s Frank Taylor has a flurry of posts looking at all the new features.

This is cool: Brian Flood looks at the new gx namespace that defines the markup language for the tour functionality:

The “gx” namespace contains several new tags that focus on the undersea functionality (gx:altitudeMode), the historical imagery (gx:timeStamp) and the new Touring engine in GE5 (gx:Tour, gx:flyTo, gx:AnimatedUpdate etc). Going forward, this is undoubtedly how they will sidestep OGC when they need to add new visualization functionality to GE in, shall we say, a timely manner.

His post continues with some ready examples of these tags in use.

Barry Hunter discovers some more interesting tidbits: Among others:

• HTML popup balloons are now rendered by a webkit browser, with Javascript and iFrames support
• Overview Map moved to behind the Google Logo
• Support for non-rectangular groundoverlays.

There is more where that came from.

Virgil Zetterlind also writes a post focusing more on the developer side of today’s announcement. He notes, among other things:

• Support for most CSS
• No support for cookies
• Links to local content disabled by default
• Polygons and Lines are now ‘hot’ clickable

He too elaborates on all this.

Update – 22:15 UTC:

• The elevation exaggeration option in preferences (changeable from 0.5-3) also works undersea. Undersea crevasses get deeper.
• The panorama “bug”, where the widest field of view allowed for a panorama is only around 60 degrees, is still there.
• Brian Flood links to it in passing but it is worth pointing this out: The KML reference page has been updated to include the new KML extension namespace and the gx prefix.

Update – 22:46 UTC:

SearchEngineLand liveblogged Google’s press event in San Francisco earlier today.

Update – 23:22 UTC:

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Both Google Earth Pro and Google Earth Enterprise also get a revamp to match Google Earth Free 5.0.

The Official Google Blog carries John Hanke’s blog post announcing Google Earth 5.

First product announcement that incorporates Google Earth 5’s new touring feature: Visual Nature Studio 3 lets you export the application’s camera motion paths as tours.

Google Lat Long Blog gives us the backstory behind the new historical imagery tool.

Kurt’s Weblog posts the NASA press release announcing Google Mars.