no its not just marketing. its really easy to use and presents global information in an immediately accessible format. no mucking about scrolling from map-to-map, its just *there* - 3d-terrain, 3d-buildings, roads, railways, borders, all sorts of public information, sort of like a super 3d world autoroute. i love it, i spend hours on it. im doing an overlay for all the main archaeological sites in the Middle East - Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Hellenistic, Roman blah blah blah. You should see Babylon, its enormous! so is Ur, the Ziggurat is very impressive.

then there's places like Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, thats enormous. My daughter showed me all the places in Leningrad (St Petersburg) she'd been to recently. and you can tilt the map up and get angled and horizontal views - fly over a high-res area at about 5000 feet and you can see everything in stunning detail. the resolution is better than M$ Flight Sim Virtual Photographic Scenery. you can virtually drop down to street level in high-res cities and move around the streets (and plot routes etc)

so they stick some ads in and links to businesses. so what? its a joy to use and I dont resent a few ads for summat thats completely free and gives me so much pleasure.

go Google Earth.