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Google Earth API Will Be Retired On December 12, 2015

Posted by timothy on from the so-be-on-that-bus-to-mars dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google [on Friday] announced it plans to retire the Google Earth API on December 12, 2015. The reason is simple: Both Chrome and Firefox are removing support for Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plugins due to security reasons, so the API's death was inevitable. The timing makes sense. Last month, Google updated its plan for killing off NPAPI support in Chrome, saying that it would block all plugins by default in January and drop support completely in September. The company also revealed that the Google Earth plugin had dropped in usage from 9.1 percent of Chrome users in October 2013 to 0.1 percent in October 2014. Add dwindling cross-platform support (particularly on mobile devices), and we're frankly surprised the announcement didn't come sooner.

1 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I want plugins! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    PPAPI is the modern interface for plugins.

    By "modern" you mean Google Chrome only, right? Vendor lock-in does seem to be what "modern" means these days mostly.