I just had a funny IM conversation with my friend who works at Googs, I sent him the link for the Flash globe from Poly9 that I just saw on MXNA. The description reads “Poly9 FreeEarth is a cross-browser, cross-platform 3D globe which does not require any download.” Turns out it wasn’t quite so easy 🙂

Doug McCune: http://freeearth.poly9.com/ eventually we’ll get google earth in flash

Google Employee: i don’t see anything when i go to the page

DM: ha. really? like nothing at all?

GE: doesn’t look like it’s ready for primetime. no earth

DM: well, so much for that then

GE: do you see anything?

DM: yeah, a spinning 3d earth

GE: using firefox? do you need flash 9?

DM: probably. it’s definitely flash player, probably 9

GE: hold on. geez, didn’t have to install anything my ass

DM: haha

GE: don’t have priveleges. hold on. god dammit

DM: haha, it’s not that cool, not worth the effort

GE: oh, i’m sure it’s not. i just want to show you how big a pain in the ass it is. i’ll tell you when i get it…

DM: I’m timing you. I’ll send the report to adobe

Google Employee disconnected

I assume this was a restart. He didn’t come back on IM though, so god knows. So while us Flash/Flex guys keep bragging about 80-90% flash player 9 penetration, we gotta still remember that we can’t claim that anything we make “does not require any download”.