“What you’re never going to find in Voyager is, ‘Here’s a tour of homes of celebrities,’” Ms. Moore said. “What we want to do is inspire people to explore the world through this interactive educational experience. We see it as a way to bridge cultures.”

For more than a decade, Google Earth has allowed users to see the places they plan to visit before they actually do — or to revisit places they once knew.

But as Google Earth became more ubiquitous, people found other ways to leverage it. Virtual flights over land and sea with Google Earth, it turned out, were an excellent way to learn about places, Ms. Moore said.

“In an ad hoc, kind of grass-roots manner, people were using it to tell stories,” she said. “What we realized is we wanted to take it to the next level.”

The latest update took two years to create, Gopal Shah, a Google Earth project manager, said in a blog post. Ms. Moore called it “our gift to the world,” noting that the tool is “not commercialized” in any way.