One of the neatest features added to Google Earth in the past few years is the Historical Imagery added in Google Earth 5. Being able to go back in time and few older imagery is such a neat thing to do.
Now that Google is starting to roll out fresh Street View imagery around the world, we’re getting a glimpse of a somewhat similar feature in there. There’s two parts to this:
First, Google has created a special “Build the Memory” site for imagery in Japan, allowing you to see before and after shots of towns affected by the earthquake and tsunami.
It’s not a full-fledged “historical” view, since it’s only for Japan, but it’s a very neat way to see that imagery.
The also added the oft-requested feature of putting dates on the Street View imagery. It’s been a fun game to try to determine when imagery was captured, but now they tell you the month and year right on the imagery while you’re viewing it!
The dates don’t appear when you’re using Street View inside of Google Earth, but I would expect that’ll be coming in a future update.
You can read more about these updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.