Why might my computer be unable to run Google Earth?

I don’t have my specs close to hand, but my previous computer was not much diffirent and it had no problems. Is there some obvious reason why it wouldn’t work? Could it be a graphics card issue? My current one is pretty weak.

When I try to download it, it just says it’s going into Google Chrome and vanishes.

If I had to guess, I’d put it down to graphics driver issues. Can you run any 3D test programs?
The system requirements for windows (which is what I assume you’re running) state 3D-capable with 16MB of VRAM - which is vague, or 23 MB with “3D capability” which is still vague, and DirectX 9.

If you’re on any kind of recent windows variant, you can download DirectX 9 for free from microsoft if you don’t have it installed right now. If you can install that, it probably should work, but it may be terribly slow if graphics card doesn’t support DirectX or OpenGL.

So you can’t even download and install it?

Any card that doesn’t support DirectX is going to be horribly old. I had an old integrated graphics AGP chip from ATI that was made in 1998, and it had DX9 drivers available.