News

When a customer recently inquired about roofing five apartment buildings in Grass Valley, Calif., Jay Saber didn’t bother to jump in his truck to drive out and take measurements. Mr. Saber, the owner of Saber Roofing Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., instead punched the addresses into Google Inc.’s free Earth software to pull up aerial views of the buildings. He used the program to measure the roofs and eyeball their conditions. After he determined that the job would cost more than $100,000, he emailed the estimate to the client the next day…