Google adds YouTube videos to Google Earth

Google may have started out as a search engine, but the company now has all sorts of divisions: e-mail, maps, online video, social networking, online document creation/storage, photo sharing. Some of these services already talk to one another. You can send a Google Document via e-mail, for instance. Others remain separate. There's no way to save a photo from Gmail to Picasa Web.

But if you've noticed that many of Google's services are marching slowly toward convergence, you're not alone. Today Google announced support for discovering geotagged YouTube videos from within Google Earth. Because you know, that's exactly what you've been waiting for. Wait, what?

Here's how it works. Anyone can tag a YouTube video with the location where it was recorded. Then when you're searching Google Earth you can look for videos from across the globe. The new geotagged video layer is in the 'featured content" folder of Google Earth. Click on the YouTube button and you'll see video icons pop up. When you zoom in you'll find even more videos. You can play them from within Google Earth or you can click through to YouTube and watch them in your web browser.

It's kind of cool, but seriously, we would have been happier if Google had announced we could save Gmail attachments to Picasa Web.

Tags: geotagged, geotagging, google-earth, youtube