Google Desperate to Save Earth?

I don’t want to sound cynical but two posts I have read recently were too close for comfort. I first read a blog post Duncan Riley on TechCrunch titled “Google Earth Heading Towards Extinction?” on November 28th 2007. Then I found a blog post dated November 30th 2007 on Official Google Blog titled “Tracking Santa, then and now” by some Carrie Farrell, which talks about tracking Santa Claus with Google Earth and NORAD(North American Aerospace Defence Command). Now that’s what I call really farfetched. Is Google trying to cash in on Christmas? If you ask my opinion I don’t think Google would stoop so low for such mundane things but then again as they say desperate times call for desperate measures. May be Google Earth IS heading towards extinction.

When they could have simply told us about the new fun feature, they say:

You can download Google Earth and add the NORAD Tracks Santa iGoogle gadget to your iGoogle page anytime, but make sure to come back to noradsanta.org on December 24th to download the special Santa Tracking file for an enhanced 3D Santa-tracking experience.

Now you can see that you have to install Google Earth and go to the noradsanta.org and download the tracking file for Google Earth on Christmas eve. So may be they are thinking of kick starting the use of Google Earth, again.