Google Earth is getting a new feature on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. The 3D interactive map and globe application completed its 20th anniversary on June 10, and to mark the occasion, the Mountain View-based tech giant is adding the historical Street View imagery feature. The feature was first added to Maps last year, and now it is also being expanded to Google Earth. With this, users will be able to see images of a neighbourhood across different years.
Google Earth Completes 20 Years
In a blog post, the tech giant announced the new feature for Google Earth and said, “Today, we’re celebrating this milestone birthday by bringing historical Street View imagery to Google Earth.” With this feature, users can view different areas of the planet as they looked in different years. The feature supports a bird’s eye view as well as street view.
Notably, the feature was first introduced in Google Maps in September 2024. It allows users to explore the evolving geography of a particular place using the company’s library of satellite and aerial images. The Maps version of the feature lets users go as far as 80 years in the past. This feature also trended on social media as users tried to revisit their childhood homes.
Apart from the novelty, Google claims that the feature will also help general users and experts in understanding how forests, lakes, and other geographies are affected by the changing climate and human intervention.
Historical Street View imagery on Maps also offered a Timelapse mode that shows a slideshow of a location’s changes over a period of time. This feature is said to be an interactive experience built from millions of satellite images.
Google is also introducing Gemini-powered AI-driven insights for Google Earth Pro users. This feature will let users ask information about geographies such as the Earth’s total tree canopy coverage, and more. The company will let users ask natural language queries and get answers from Google Earth’s data. This feature will be added in the coming weeks, the tech giant said.
