Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
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Title: Google brings historical Street View to Google Earth

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:30:40 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-brin...

Google Earth is celebrating its 20th birthday, and to mark the occasion,
Google is bringing historical Street View imagery to the service. In a blog
post, Google said the anniversary update allows users to "explore the wonders
of the planet from even more viewpoints, whether itΓÇÖs a birdΓÇÖs eye view
or at street level."

From today, when you load up Google Earth youΓÇÖll see a new option for
historical imagery in the toolbar, which allows you to move back and forth
between now and years gone by. Seemingly predicting that you might be
overwhelmed by the prospect of having the entire planet at your fingertips,
Google offers some suggestions. You might want to look at a timelapse of
Berlin between 1943 and the modern day, in which time the Berlin Wall was
built and fell, before the city underwent huge urban transformation. You
could also observe the rapid expansion of Las Vegas since the 1980s, or how
HoustonΓÇÖs NRG Stadium was built on top of what was just farmland back in
1944. Some Maps users have even used the historical view to look up, say,
pictures of their homes from years gone by, occasionally finding imagery of
lost loved ones in the process.

Google also announced further updates to Google Earth, including new AI-
driven insights for professional users in the US. Urban planners will soon be
able to access information about things like tree canopy coverage and surface
land temperatures of different areas of a city using built-in Gemini
insights.

Google Earth first launched in 2005, and according to Google was downloaded
100 million times in its first week. ItΓÇÖs had a number of major updates
over the years, adding features such as searchable wallpapers and 3D
timelapse videos.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-
tech/google-brings-historical-street-view-to-google-earth-
153040270.html?src=rss

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