Google has done a great favor to my history and geography-loving heart when the company announced that Google Earth will capture historical imagery of the region through satellite and aerial imagery going back 80 years. Google previously released a timelapse tool that shows satellite imagery from 1984 to 2022.
The new photos include everything from the transformation of a California reservoir over a five-year period to images of cities like London, Berlin, and Warsaw at the outbreak of World War II. There are also photos of American cities like San Francisco in 1938, and even one of San Francisco in 2022. This reminds me of another site I’ve spent way too much time on: 1940s.nyc, which uses the archives of the New York City Public Archives to show photos of buildings from 1939 to 1941.
In addition to letting you dig deep into changes to water systems and cityscapes, Google is also rolling out new Street View imagery in about 80 countries. These photos show places like Löggström, Denmark (pictured above), Oaxaca, Mexico, and Tasman, New Zealand. Google says the newest camera weighs 15 pounds and can be mounted in any car, allowing the company to expand Street View even further. There are now more than 280 billion images in Street View.
And of course, no 2024 tech update would be complete without a mention of AI: Google has trained an AI model, Cloud Score+, to recognize and remove fog, cloud shadows, and haze to create brighter, clearer images in Google Earth and Google Maps.
