Hi! If you like time travel this post is right for you, recently the web version of Google Earth and its app had an update in which we can see past Satellite Imagery, previously this was only possible with the desktop version of Earth Pro, so now it’s more convenient, here is a GIF showing the construction of the Google Visitor Experience in Mountain View.
Now you can travel in time and see how different parts of the world have changed like the construction of buildings, stadiums, oh and yes, you can also see your house, that’s a classic.
How to use it?
Web version 
Tap here
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First, head to https://earth.google.com/web
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In the top bar select the globe icon with an counter clockwise arrow and it will activate “Historical Imagery”
Mobile (Google Earth App)
Tap here
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Open Google Earth App
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Tap the “Layers” button and scroll to the bottom
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Tap the toggle of Historical Imagery
After enabling Historical Imagery, you can navigate using the timeline located at the top of the screen in the web version and at the bottom in the Earth app. The 3D buildings feature is temporarily disabled while using Historical Imagery to provide a clearer view of the satellite images of old imagery.
Here are some examples:
Something incredible is that you can go back even to 1938 in cities like San Francisco, this is like having a map museum at home, one of the cities that has some interesting scans is London which has names of areas on it, you can see here the WESTMINSTER area in 1945 and 2024. Tap here to see it on Google Earth
How about the Colosseum area (1943 & 2023)?
If you are lucky you can see sport events like F1, here is the Mexico Grand Prix captured from space (2022) and the Estadio GNP section (2024):
There is also the Timelapse feature, you can enable it by tapping the clock with a clockwise arrow icon, it shows you a sequence of all the imagery, it is mostly for seeing an entire city as the images are not HD in the animation.
I really like to have this type of feature because we can see the evolution of points of interest and combined with the Street view timeline feature the “time travel” experience is complete with satellite view and street level images.
Here’s a YouTube video about that Street View feature that was released 10 years ago (I love that Doc Brown Pegman version)
What do you think about this feature?
In which places will you use it?
