I completely agree. Naturally, the ignorant explanation gets the most publicity and completely fails to recognize the most important use for Google Earth: GIS. I work for an engineering firm doing GIS everyday, and we almost can't keep up with the amount of work clients have for us. Oh, and all 40+ employees in the office are using Google Earth 4, and they use it CONSTANTLY.

Maybe things got lost in translation. Not to defend the Spiegel article or anything but I can see what was meant by "Google Earth wasn't really intended for scientists". However, the it should read "specifically" rather than really. As rightly pointed out GE is a GIS tool, albeit on that does trade-off utility against usability.

It was amusing/ironic to note that the first picture in the article, which is captioned "Maps with information abput groundwater distribution in Seattle. Google Earth makes it possible", is in fact a screenshot from ArcGIS Explorer.

Things got indeed lost in translation.
The important sentence for understanding the meaning in the original german version of the article translates to "The Google search engine's extraordinary globe, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of satellite photos and aerial images, initially became famous as a game for virtual hobby pilots." which is only about the public perception of the program, not about googles intentions!