Old Google Maps imagery

[bugo]

What happens to old satellite imagery and Street View pictures when they are replaced on Google Maps? I know about the historical imagery function in Google Earth. There should be an option to view old imagery.

Nexus 5X

[Kulerage]

It exists for Street View as well on Google Maps. Dunno why normal satellite isn't available.

[AlexandriaVA]

Because at least 95% of users of Google Maps, in my estimate, have no use for historic imagery. They want to use GM for navigations and restaurants.

Moreover, I don't know how you monetize it. It just adds costs to operations without bringing in extra revenue.

If anything, it's remarkable that Google Earth and GSV themselves have the old stuff.

[jakeroot]

Google's satellite imagery is from other sources, so it can't monetize its functions on its various services (which wouldn't matter anyway since Google has plenty of revenue from other sources -- it could easily implement historic sat shots on its website if it wanted to). Google's own satellite imagery is in the form of its 3D imagery.

Historic satellite photos on GMaps' website would be cool, since Historic Aerials has those really annoying watermarks (though it does tend to have older satellite photos).

Historic Street View has been around for a while now, bugo. Have you used the new Google Maps, or have you shied away from it? I guess for the several years between Street View launching, and historic imagery becoming available, the images were just archived. I'm sure they always planned on launching the history imagery function, but wanted to wait until they had several years of data.

[WR of USA]

I only use google maps for navigation, otherwise I use google earth for exploring, and historical aerials for checking out older satellite imagery. I know on google earth they sometimes make the mistake of putting the old street view images in a parking lot nearby the road they updated. I like to compare the old vs new street view this way.

[MNHighwayMan]

My biggest beef with Google Earth is the glacial slowness with which roadway data is updated. It still doesn't have, for example, the final, western segment of MN-610, or the new St. Croix River Crossing near Stillwater.

Also, GSV in Earth sucks (buggy and not as easy to use) and there's no access to old images.

But, unlike Maps, Earth does show county boundaries easily, and you can enable city boundaries (in the US) as well, although in some cases those boundaries are wrong, inaccurate, or really out of date. The boundaries it shows for Des Moines, for example, are from the early 2000s.

[AlexandriaVA]

I can almost assure you that Google isn't manually updating any sort of information....roads, city boundaries.

That would be too labor intensive for such a large undertaking.

I suspect they are nearly entirely reliant on government-provided data (e.g. county planning GIS maps, etc)

[MNHighwayMan]

The part you're probably missing is that Google Maps has all these updates (at least the two I used as examples), but Google Earth does not. Both of those roads have been open for a year, or nearly a year, which is kind of pathetic to not have updated to yet.

Furthermore, it raises questions of why the two programs don't use the same dataset. I can't really figure a reason why they wouldn't.

[vdeane]

I remember in the early days Google Maps used Navteq data, but Earth used the less reliable TeleAtlas.  I think Maps briefly switched to TeleAtlas before Google decided to use their own data.

[johndoe]

I can almost assure you that Google isn't manually updating any sort of information....roads, city boundaries.

I know that after some of our jobs have completed we sent notes to Google but have had varying success in getting their linework updated.  I also have no idea where their closure data comes from ....routinely they'll show roads closed that aren't.  Waze has been faster at updating ramps/etc.

I also find the different aerials between maps and earth to be strange.

[vdeane]

I also find the different aerials between maps and earth to be strange.

That one is usually due to 3D mode being enabled by default in Maps, though not always.  The 3D imagery is usually older than the latest 2D imagery.

[froggie]

Longer process to build the 3D rendition, hence the difference in aerial age.