Permission and Licensing

Whether you’re working in TV, film, online, mobile, or beyond, licensing and permissions procedures govern your use of Google Earth and Maps in media. The basics are outlined below. If your use case requires a free broadcast license (see below), please send us your information via this broadcast license inquiry form, and we’ll send you an e-mail to confirm whether you qualify.

For further details please consult our Permissions page, as well as the Google Maps/Google Earth Terms and Conditions and the Google Maps/Google Earth APIs Terms of Service.

TV

All television uses of Google Earth and Google Maps, including Street View and other features, require a free broadcast license. Please send us your information via this broadcast license inquiry form, and we’ll send you an e-mail to confirm whether you qualify. Along with the broadcast license, we also offer access to unlimited e-mail addresses within your network to Google Earth Studio, our web-based tool custom-built for broadcasters.

You do not need permission or a broadcast license if you are demonstrating the use of a Google product as such, for example a news story about Google Earth or a segment teaching viewers how to use Street View to research vacation destinations.

In all cases, you must show attribution to Google, and our data providers, on screen at the time the content is shown. We cannot grant an exception to this requirement under any circumstance. For further details please see our Permissions Guidelines.

Film

All film uses of Google Earth and Google Maps require a free broadcast license. Please send us your information via this broadcast license inquiry form, and we’ll send you an e-mail to confirm whether you qualify.

You do not need permission or a broadcast license if you are demonstrating the use of a Google product as such, for example a scene showing an actor using Google Earth on a computer.

In all cases, you must show attribution to Google and our data providers on screen at the time the content is shown. We cannot grant an exception to this requirement under any circumstances. For further details please see our Permissions Guidelines.

Online

If you are embedding interactive Google Earth or Google Maps in your website, either by a simple embed or with our APIs, no permission is required and your use is governed by the applicable Terms of Service. Please see our instructions on adding Google Maps to your website for more information about these options. You can also learn about embedding the Google Earth Plug-in, installed on more than 150 million computers, and free and quick to download.

If you're embedding a video or taking still screenshots of Google Earth or Maps, you may only do so with full and complete attribution to Google and our data providers, as explained in the Permissions Guidelines. No explicit permission is required.

Mobile

Similar to our online terms, if you use our APIs or a mobile device’s native Google Maps implementation (such as on an Android-powered phone or iPhone), no special permission is required, but you must always keep the Google name visible. Offline caching of our content is never allowed.

Print

Please see the Permissions Tool on our Permissions site for more guidance.