Other photos submitted by Google Maps users (single current images, not historical) run along the bottom. The window with the clock icon in the upper right-hand corner shows the same street in October of 2007. It marks the latest in a recent string of expansions in what users can see in street view, from the ruins of Angkor Wat to the Colorado River.Ī screen shot shows the reconstruction of New Orleans' 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina. The project pulls together years of Google Street View imagery, some of it previously unreleased, and took several months to complete. By selecting 'street view' and clicking on a clock icon at the top of the screen, users can explore an area’s evolution as far back as Google’s photo-documentation can reach. The new time-travel function draws on image data captured by a fleet of Google Street View SUVs, snowmobiles, tricycles, and even a backpack, which for seven years have trekked across the globe with video cameras and GPS units to capture busy intersections and rolling hillsides across all seven continents. “Our mission in maps is to build a map that’s accurate, useful and comprehensive, and I think that being able to expose historic images that we’ve collected in the past helps us be able to meet this comprehensiveness aspect,” says Vinay Shet, the product manager of Google Street View. Since it was released in 2007, Google Street View has allowed users to explore a given area from the perspective of walking along a sidewalk, but with the new tool, they’ll actually be able to see how the street and its surroundings have changed. That’s the premise behind Google Maps’ newest time-lapse tool, launched today. A lot can change in seven years: buildings rise and landscapes change. Whether you’re standing near the ocean in Japan or in the middle of Times Square, your view will likely be quite different in less than a decade.

Google satellite street view