Google Opens Up Street View Archives From 2007 To Today

mpicpp (3454017) writes with news that Google is publishing all Street View imagery back to 2007. Quoting Ars: "The feature hasn't rolled out to many accounts yet, but it looks like a small, draggable window will be added to the Street View interface. Just move the time slider around and you'll be able to jump through past images. Granted, Street View has only been around for a few years, so the archives only go back to 2007. A few of the events Google suggests browsing through are the building of One World Trade Center and the destruction and rebuilding of Onagawa, Japan after the 2011 earthquake. Besides being really cool, the move will save Google from having to choose a canonical Street View image for every location. If the current image is blacked-out or wrong in some way, you can just click back to the previous one."

Google Earth

[Charliemopps]

This has been available on Google earth for years. It's just new to Google Maps. The most useful aspect of this is if you're buying a house. You can look back at past records to see just how old that swimming pool really is... or did the owner really build that garage last year?

It's the opposite of handy if you're selling however ;-)

Re:Google Earth

[NJRoadfan]

The Google Earth feature was for satellite imagery. This new feature is for Street View images. Sadly it won't be of much use around here as the original 2007 photos are the latest available in many areas! I guess they are trying to give people an excuse to switch to the mostly broken new Google Maps interface.