- Google Earth Celebrate is 20 -year’s Birthday this month
- It has just added a new historical street viewing feature to time travel
- Pro users also get AI-driven upgrades to help with urban planning
Google Earth is just 20 years old, and the digital globe has picked up a feature that could prove to be an addictive time-singing-historical street view.
Yes, we have been able to travel time around our cities and earlier homes for years on Google Maps, but Google Earth feels like a natural home for the feature considering its more immersive 3D views and satellite photos. And from today, Google Earth now offers street view with the historic menu bar.
This means you can visit famous buildings and landmarks (like the vessel building in New York City below) and effectively see their construction unfold. To do so, find a location in Google Earth, pull the Pegman icon (in the bottom right) on the street, click ‘See More Dates’, and use the movie strip menu to select the year.
Around major cities and landmarks, Street View images are updated so regularly now that their snapshots are often only monthly intervals, but in most areas they are renewed each one to two years. It opens up a greater nostalgic potential, especially if the shots happen to frozen someone you know in time.
To bring the story to life
To celebrate the Earth’s birthday, Google has also made timelaps for its favorite historical air views that sew together satellite photos for several decades. This feature became available in the Internet and mobile versions of the Earth last year – to find it, go on the layer icon and turn on the ‘historical images’ trains.
A fascinating example is the aerial photo by the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral (above) that Google made solely for us. It shows the Gothic icon of 1943 to its unfortunate brand in 2019, followed by its recent reconstruction.
But other examples of Google selecting out include a view of Berlin, from its destruction after the war to the Berlin Wall and its modern incarnation, plus the amazing growth of Las Vegas and San Francisco for decades.
There is a great chance that Google Earth will again send me an hour -long rabbit hole with these street views and historic image tricks. But it also gives Pro users some new AI-driven features in “The coming weeks”, with features such as ‘Tree Canopy Coverage’ and Heatmaps showing land surface temperatures that emphasize the soil’s potential for urban planning.
It may suggest with the gemini-driven treats that come for us non-professional users in the future. But so far I have more than enough soil -related treasure hunt to keep me busy.
