I have have set up several customized Google maps and embedded them into website pages. The functionality and capabilities of Google Maps has continued to evolve. Keeping current with the technology has been important.
The first Google Maps I embedded had a very cool feature that allowed the user to toggle between Google Map and Google Earth. The process was to first create the map in Google Earth and them import the Google Earth .kml file into Google Maps. Next the Google Map was made “public” and an embed code was generated. With the embed code added into the webpage the Google Map would appear with all the custom markup and configuration. It could be made to appear in a standard Google Map mode or in Google Earth mode and the user could toggle between the two modes. Both modes could be zoomed and panned by the user and the Google Earth mode also allowed the view to be rotated in three dimensions to almost any view angle or perspective.
Unfortunately, Google eliminated the ability to toggle between map and earth modes when using custom kml files. After that, it was possible to embed either a Google Earth mode map or a standard Google Map. One or the other could be embedded but the ability to toggle between the two was taken away.
As of recently Google has eliminated altogether the ability to use Google Earth mode from within a website. Standard Google Map mode still works just fine, but Google Earth within a website is no mas. It seems crazy that this excellent and useful Google Earth functionality was deprecated (they did not consult me <g>). Google does not inform in advance of these changes nor do they give any idea of future plans. I hope that they are working on an enhanced replacement for embedding Google Earth kml files. Regardless, I will be staying up to date with Google Maps and Google Earth and updating the maps I have set up to make use of whatever becomes possible.
See the Gray Head Trail Map.