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by gondaloof 1159 days ago
You could say the same about Google Earth on mobile. Do you need a separate app? I’m honestly surprised it still exists.
3 comments

Google Earth presents the same data in a very different way - Google Maps is mostly about navigation and discovering businesses and other locations in an area, Google Earth is more about exploration and discovering cool places. Sort of like how paper maps and atlases both had reasons to exist.
Google earth on mobile lets you load up local KML files, which I don't think normal maps does
Google has never been great at integrating their acquisitions. Even their own video search still can't seem to match YouTube's search for things on YouTube even with exact titles. Google Earth started as Keyhole. It's the K in KML. It gained notoriety pre-acquisition for being used in reporting on the invasion of Iraq. Maps was a different company.

You can export and import KML in Maps, but it's in a separate custom map interface under Saved->Maps. It's not integrated with the main interface like in Earth as far as I can tell. If there's a way to load them like overlays in Earth, that would be useful.

Last I knew, Google Earth on desktop also lets you play with local KML files.
wait, how is this comment already in the article?
Noticed that too-- happened within about 5 mins of the comment.

Perhaps the poster is the author of article, and possibly the user gondaloof (they are both green accounts).

Or maybe the author of the article is just paying attention to HN.