I used google earth to locate caches in different areas ...
It worked fine until the crash of 4th of Juli. After the service came up this special feature doesn`t work since today.
I've now read in the forum in the release notes, that this feature has been stopped ... but it worked until the crash and I used it every day.
I used it to examine a new array (with all possibilities google earth supports (coordinates, difference in altitude, zoom in/out etc.)) to see if there are some caches.
The other function I use is: With Cacheberry (my caching software) I am able to log my track and load this file in google earth as a gpx-file. Then you can see where you walked and how far away the caches has been you found or didn't find.
For this features I can't find a workarround with google maps or any other tool than google earth ....