Google Earth Now Works in Firefox, Edge, and Opera Browsers, Safari Support Coming Later

Google has announced that Google Earth can now be accessed in browsers other than Chrome. From today, the new version of the interactive mapping app on the web fully supports Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers.

Earth launched on the web in 2017, but there wasn't an open web standard available at the time that could support its advanced features, so it exclusively relied on Google's Chrome-only Native Client (NaCl) technology.

The new support for other browsers was made possible by moving Google Earth for Chrome onto WebAssembly (Wasm), which Google has helped develop for the last three years. It's now the leading W3C open web standard for bringing native code to the web.

Google still aims to bring Earth to Apple's Safari browser, but admitted in its blog post that "we still have some work to do" before it can make that happen.

Google said last year that Earth would support Safari once Apple adds "better support for WebGL2" in the browser. That's still in development, according to WebKit's online Feature Status report.

In the meantime, iPhone and iPad users can check out the dedicated Google Earth iOS app, which lets you explore world from above with satellite imagery, 3D terrain of the entire globe, and 3D buildings in hundreds of cities around the world.