Till now Google Earth worked only in Chrome browser that used Native Client (NaCl) technology, today Google launched the public beta of Earth that uses WebAssembly (Wasm) and works in Firefox and Chromium browsers such as Microsoft Edge (Canary) and Opera. But the key difference between Google Earth in Chrome and other browsers is former supports multi-threading of WebAssembly, other browsers don’t, because of this, Earth runs single-threaded in non-Chrome browsers and the experience won’t be great.
When Google Earth available as a desktop app, everybody downloaded and installed it to experience how world would look-like. In 2017, Google brought Earth to Web and used Native Technology to port their Earth Code written in C++, as a result, it hasn’t performed in other browsers.
As Google started to address this with WebAssembly available, we can now able to access Earth in Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Edge browsers but with a downgraded experience.
Earth team explained why Google Earth performance and experience will be greater in multi-threaded WebAssembly supported browsers.
Classic Edge and Safari lack WebGL support, that’s why Earth doesn’t work in these browsers, Edge based on Chromium now supports Earth beta.
Firefox supports WebAssembly, but it doesn’t support multi-threading because of removed SharedArrayBuffer. Mozilla and other browser vendors including Google, removed the feature to protect users against Spetre and Meltdown attacks. After introducing Site Isolation feature, Google re-enabled SharedArraybuffer.
Mozilla is working to bringing site isolation to Firefox and feature required for multi-threading of WebAssembly will be re-enabled when it is available. Go and try Google Earth beta.
