Measuring Lengths and Areas in Google Maps and Google Earth

Abstract

In 2005, Google Maps was launched on the internet as a service intended to aid orientation in space and navigation from one point to another by car, public transport, on foot, by bicycle, or by plane. In making the mathematical basis of the maps, Google Maps applied a procedure in which geodetic coordinates on the ellipsoid φ and λ were mapped into a plane according to the formulas of the normal Mercator projection for mapping a sphere.