Sadly, not just yet. But there’s a fantastic look to the future over at the Google Earth Blog, where Frank Taylor has posted a video of an Apple iPhone running a very Google Earth-like application.

The best bet is just to head right over there and enjoy the video for yourself but if you’re feeling lazy, then feel free instead to ogle our screen capture above. In fact, this isn’t Google Earth at all but a tech demo from a company called Earthscape. Gearthblog’s Taylor shot this video while being shown the demo by Earthscape’s CEO, Tom Churchill, at the 2008 Where 2.0 Conference in California a couple of weeks ago.

Now, remember this is not Google Earth running on an iPhone. But it is a very impressive show. Earthscape’s developers have embraced the iPhone’s accelerometers as a control mechanism for their little 3D Earth demo, meaning control is a simple case of tilting and turning the iPhone (not that you’d realise that immediately, as the sausage-thumbed Churchill seems to have no idea how best to finger an iPhone).

Of course, it should also be pointed out that, as things stand, there’d be no practical way to pipe to an iPhone the substantial amount of data that Google Earth sucks down. So it’s no surprise that Earthscape’s runs entirely locally. Still, it’s a great effort.

[via Google Earth Blog]

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