There are two usual suspects if it comes to a non functional GoogleEarth installation.

1. Permission issue:
   check every single directory, if they’re writable and are owned by the user who’s going to launch GoogleEarth

   ~/.config/Google
   ~/.googleerarth

2. The 64bit (x86_64) issue:
   In order to run at all, GoogleEarth needs some 32bit libs. I’ve performed a reinstall of them

   aptitude reinstall lib32nss-mdns

   but nevertheless had no dice anyhow.

3. Finally I’ve downloaded the previous version “Linux: Google Earth 4.2”, which is also there available for download. It’s verson 4.2.0205.5730 from 13th November 2007. I’ve changed the permission to executable again, and started it. I’ve been asked, whether I’d like to download and install a new GoogleEarth version. I’ve decided to not to do so. And voilà, GoogleEarth started again!

So if this is due to my new NVIDIA Beta driver, then it could be (speculation) the new OpenGL3.0 part. One could have more clarity if one tests this whole scenario with NVIDIA’s 180.06 or 180.08 drivers, since they don’t have the new OpenGl inlcuded yet. (Feedback welcome). If the stable branch should be also affected (177.xx), then it must be something completely different. Of course it’s also possible GoogleEarth 4.3 is also a bit Beta
But aren’t we all a bit Beta? 😉