From the Vice Presidential pad to some hidden pot farms, there's a lot of interesting stuff to look at that we've been hearing about in Google Maps and Google Earth lately. The latest addition to the global mapping software is on its way today, as Google gets ready for a big press event in San Fransisco, featuring former Vice President Al Gore. Looking over the featured guest list, including an oceanographer, and considering some of the high resolution seabed footage recently added to Google Earth, the popular consensus is that Google is expanding its land-based Google Earth coverage into what some are dubbing Google Ocean.

Right now, not only is the Google Earth ocean imagery very low resolution, but it lacks the 3D terrain information the landforms have. By adding in this bathymetric data, Google Earth would take a big step closer to creating an accurate whole-world representation of the planet. Considering how oceans make up over seventy percent of the planet's area, that's a large piece of the puzzle that's been missing this whole time.

Creating an accurate representation of the ocean will be difficult, as it's much more dangerous and expensive than mapping land. Though there are very high resolution scans for parts that have received significant attention from scientists, a lot of it is largely unstudied. So, expect patchy sets of data, at least at first. What's next? Google sailing the seas with specially-equipped boats, creating a Street View-type scan of reefs and other popular spots?

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