I'm a developer, so I can recognise stupid when I see it. For an end user app, setting a root file location makes no sense and therefore the developer screwed up, not me. The app was coded by a developer that defaulted the location to the root user. Therefore, I didn't set a location for 'My Places', the app did.

I didn't do any more than what I just stated. Upon executing the app as user bill, I get the errors I displayed. I ran a sudo apt install of the deb file and that's all I did. Which deb package did you use, and when did you download it? I used google-earth-pro-stable_current_b which doesn't have a version name in the filename, but was downloaded on 4th December this year. I don't have time to do any more digging at the moment, but perhaps a complete purge and re-installation might be quicker for you than what might be prolonged detective work. I have no idea why yours is looking in the root folder but it's a fair assumption that my default installation of Google Earth is looking in the default-by-design place. In my installation, myplaces.kml is situated in ~/.googleearth/myplaces.kml.

The error window you posted in post #3 suggests that your installation is looking for its myplaces.kml file (or trying to write to it) in the wrong place. I say that because my instance of Google Earth is running just fine on Ubuntu 22.04, and I do not see the errors you have. Whoever designed this did a lousy job.Rather than make an assumption that the developers are at fault, and throwing unjustified brickbats at them, it might be more constructive to try to find out what has gone wrong with your installation.

Install google earth ubuntu