Google Earth may be facing some real competition from the Chinese map service 51ditu. They've launched a 3D Earth project called LTEarth with many features similar to Google Earth, like flying to your destination by address search, and controls for tilt, rotate and zoom. From what we can tell the satellite images come from NASA.
To try it out yourself you'll have to download and install the plugin for IE and then use a guest login. If you're having trouble launching it, make sure that the Chinese language pack is installed on your system.
The revenue model is going to be ad based. Local businesses can list themselves in the search on a pay-per call basis using Longtuo's Dilingling service. There will also be text ads available right on the map using Longtuo's Clickeye.
