Non-EU vendorMaps & NavigationHeadquarters: US

Google Earth: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Google Earth is an application for viewing high-resolution satellite imagery, exploring 3D terrain and buildings in many cities, and using Street View on a virtual globe. It comes in three versions: Google Earth in a web browser, mobile apps through Google Play and the App Store, and Google Earth Pro for desktop, with import and export of GIS data and historical imagery. The service is not open source.

Google Earth is a product of Google LLC, part of Alphabet, which is headquartered in the United States, so it falls under US jurisdiction, including the CLOUD Act. Google's general privacy policy says it operates servers around the world and that information may be processed outside the country where you live; no specific hosting region for Earth is published. The policy does not mention the GDPR by name. For European organisations, note that this is a consumer service: those who want to use sensitive location data or their own map layers should assess for themselves whether a US service is appropriate.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Google Earth pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

17 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-30
No hosting in Europe (US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 11, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Maps & Navigation
Type	Product
Website	earth.google.com ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Google Earth

The European alternatives to Google Earth come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

37 European Maps & Navigation vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Google Earth

Google Earth is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Google Earth hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Google Earth is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Google Earth together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Google Earth?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Google Earth include BRouter, calimoto and cartes.gouv.fr. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Google Earth?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Google Earth include BRouter and GraphHopper. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Google Earth GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Google Earth is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 11, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Maps & Navigation

Maps & Navigation: Maps, route planning and navigation services. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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