• CNET News.com, Wednesday, June 6, 2007 11:01 AM

Various statistics were hurled at reporters by Google CTO Michael Jones on Tuesday at an industry conference. The most eye-opening was the revelation that Google Earth has drawn more installations than Microsoft's Windows XP. "That attracts attention," Jones said, adding that the program has drawn praised from French President Jacques Chirac and U.S. President George Bush. Never mind the contention that Google Earth is a potentially useful tool for terrorists, too.

Global political implications aside, all this goes to show that Google Earth is popular--arguably the search giant's most successful product since its search engine. Jones says that Google Earth has made geography cool, and while the search giant might not be making much money from the satellite program (yet), the potential is still huge.

People are going to want Google Earth everywhere. Next up (perhaps): GPS-enabled Google Earth on iPhones. "There's a change happening," he said. These are "signals of a society adapting to 'where' as an important part of 'what.'"

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