New Year, New Google Earth: Major Upgrades for Faster, Sustainable, Data-Driven Decisions in 2026

By The Google Earth Team

Happy New Year. As we kick off 2026, the flurry of work is about to resume and the pace of decision-making is only accelerating. The mandate for geospatial professionals this year is clear: you need to deliver deeper insights, faster.

To help you stay ahead, we are starting the year with a major release.
We are transforming the world’s most trusted map into a no-code geospatial analysis tool that powers faster, sustainable, data-driven decisions. By seamlessly combining Google’s fresh data with your proprietary intelligence, Google Earth helps you de-risk investments, accelerate workflows, and align your team on a single source of truth faster than ever before.

Here is how our latest updates help you do your best work in 2026.

Turn pixels into answers with AI

Everyone’s most valuable asset is time, yet professionals still spend countless hours manually scanning imagery to identify site characteristics or infrastructure assets. This isn’t just tedious; it is an operational bottleneck.

With our new AI capabilities, we aren’t just giving you a map; we are giving you a co-pilot. We have unlocked Google Earth’s largest dataset — the imagery itself.

With Gemini’s help, you can now search overhead imagery and Street View to instantly scan the planet. These capabilities are powered by cutting-edge multi-modal, vision-language models that make planetary analysis fast and easy for anyone. Whether you are looking for empty lots ripe for development or mapping infrastructure assets, simply Ask Google Earth. See it in action:

Imagery search in Google Earth

• The challenge: You need to find off-market opportunities in a saturated region but don’t have time to manually inspect thousands of parcels.
• The solution: Instead of scrolling endlessly, you simply type: “Using imagery search, find empty lots in industrial areas in East Los Angeles.”
• The result: In seconds, Earth performs a visual analysis of the satellite imagery and delivers a curated shortlist of viable sites, allowing you to move directly to feasibility assessment.

Infrastructure insights in Google Earth

• The challenge: You are conducting an asset audit for a maintenance contract but lack an accurate inventory of utility assets.
• The solution: You ask Earth to “Map all utility poles, street lights, and fire hydrants in this polygon.”
• The result: The system parses our Street View images, identifying and mapping assets. You get an immediate, comprehensive map — without sending a single scout to the field.

(Imagery search and infrastructure insights are currently available in Experimental for English language, web users in the US.)

Global insights, local precision

Your portfolio doesn’t stop at borders, and neither should your insights. To make high-stakes decisions remotely, you need data you can trust, regardless of where your project is located.

Earth’s data catalog is expanding. We have rolled out new data layers to Australia, Western Europe, and the Nordics, empowering you to streamline early-stage workflows and make high-stakes decisions remotely. Access new critical layers for terrain analysis, EV infrastructure, heat resilience, and more to Australia, Western Europe, and the Nordics. See it in action:

• The challenge: You are tasked with expanding an EV charging network in Rome, but you need to ensure new stations are placed in high-demand areas where drivers rely on public charging.
• The solution: You map EV charging station counts by postal code and Driveway counts by postal code to isolate high-opportunity zones. Finally, you visualize existing EV charging station locations to pinpoint the gap in the network and create a short list for new options.
• The result: You instantly identify under-served neighborhoods with high latent demand, prioritizing your roll-out plan with confidence.

(To learn more about availability and coverage, please explore our data layer documentation.)

Your data on a real-world canvas

Insights lose their power when they are trapped in silos. The tax of toggling between proprietary spreadsheets, GIS software, and visualization tools is a major friction point that destroys efficiency and creates stakeholder misalignment.

We are here to break down those walls. You can now import your own large-scale KML and GeoJSON datasets directly into Google Earth. This capability allows you to securely validate your proprietary intelligence — such as zoning models, financial data, or customer locations — against Google’s trusted real-world canvas. Take advantage of increased storage and file size quotas in our professional plans to create a single source of truth for you and your team. See it in action:

Importing, styling, and sorting data layers in Google Earth

• The Challenge: You are analyzing the New York City bike network to prioritize investments in safety, but your data is less impactful if it’s not visualized.
• The Solution: You import your GeoJSON file directly into Earth and style the network by “Facility Class,” and filter the map to show only “Protected” paths.
• The Result: You instantly isolate the high-quality infrastructure, revealing critical gaps in the network that you can present to city officials for immediate action.

There’s only one Earth. Put it to work.

With this release we are helping you accelerate workflows, de-risk decisions, and drive alignment. We’re removing the friction between questions and answers by giving you a real-world canvas with no-code geospatial evaluation and analysis tools for faster, informed decision making. These features are already live in Google Earth. Put them to work for you to save time, and move faster with your teammates.

Start exploring these new features in Google Earth today at earth.google.com.