Google has been a leading proponent of Web-based computing — software that is sent over the Internet and naturally runs within a browser. But most browser applications cannot do many of the things that more powerful PC-based software can. Google has been trying to assist close that fissure.

Google advertised the fruits of its efforts on two fronts at the company annual meeting for software developers, which is to be held in San Francisco. Google thought that it has opened to go-between developers the programming interfaces to Google Earth, the company's 3-D visualization software. That will let developers to implant Google Earth on their Web sites, much like they already can do with Google Maps.

Google noted that more than 150,000 sites have bent applications via Google Maps to do things like analytic the locations of crimes or residence rentals in assorted cities, displaying the path of airplanes in flight and assisting users work out the distance they travel on their city walks. Those same sites will be able to improve those applications through Google Earth's better-off visualization software. And other developers will be able to take benefit of Google Earth's 3-D imaging to make new applications to run on their sites.

As the applications will be entrenched in the Web sites and easy to get to through a browser, they will work anyway of whether or not users have fit Google Earth on their PCs. (Users who want the full range of features and data that is obtainable on Google Earth, will still have to download the software on their computers.)

That's a claim that plenty of people — the armies of Windows programmers, for example, or Microsoft itself — are probable to find highly arguable. But the Web is receiving better for programmers and that means normal Internet users can count on getting their hands on more influential and useful Web-based programs rapidly.