Hi,
have a look at this one:
http://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/warviews
and the article describing it:
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/071211-warviews/index_EN
The connection is quite fast for me and the GE one is a nice application
of our temporal data support for KML (I suggest you zoom in on, say,
south africa before trying to activate it, the database is worldwide
and big).
They are using GeoServer 1.5.4 (http://www.cederman.ethz.ch:8085/geoserver/welcome.do) to power both
the "static map" version and the GE version, thought nothing
in the web site or in the article mentions it (pity).
Cheers
Andrea