There are some major updates to Google Maps, Street View, and Google Earth that you should know about, and the new and improved features should prove useful in all sorts of ways for users of Google's mapping tools.
The updates are outlined in a Google blog post, and first we have the addition of historical imagery in Google Earth, dating back 80 years in some places. Some of these images were previously available in the paid Pro version of the software, but will now be accessible to all users on the web and mobile devices.
“Maybe you want to travel back in time and see what your neighborhood was like decades ago,” explains Stafford Marquardt, senior product manager at Google Maps. “Or you want to understand how forests have been affected by human activity and climate change.”
Select cities, including London, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, now offer satellite images dating back to the 1930s, allowing for a detailed look at how these places have evolved and adapted over the decades.
More Street View Images
In Google Maps, Street View imagery will be expanded in 80 countries, with some of those countries getting Street View imagery for the first time. What's more, Google says even more places will have Street View in the future.
Example photos included in Google's blog post cover Iceland, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Tasmania, Japan, Denmark, and France. According to Google, it's one of the biggest updates to Street View in its history (it was launched in 2007), and the total number of images now exceeds 280 billion.
And finally, in this round of updates, Google says it is “improving” satellite imagery in Google Earth and Google Maps. With a little help from AI, new cloud removal tools have been applied to reveal more of the world than ever before, giving you “an updated global mosaic that gives you a clearer, more accurate view of Earth.”
If you don't see Google Earth and Google Maps updates on your device yet, they should appear soon. We saw another update earlier this week, when Google Maps improved its lane navigation interface on Android Auto.