Google Earth Pro was $399. Now it's free.

tokyo

Google Earth Pro lets you fly around our planet and zoom in really close to areas of interest. I was able to see some junk in my backyard that I'd been meaning to clean up. A flyover tour of Tokyo is breathtaking.

CNet has a good article about the features the pro version offers:

  • Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure.
  • High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution.
  • Exclusive pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, and traffic count.
  • Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk.
  • Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution.