Google Maps Now Lets You Time Travel Through Its Street View Archives
Ever wanted to time travel? As long as you're primarily interested in visiting some time between 2007 and the present, and a place that easily reachable by car, and you're in luck. As of Wednesday, Google is putting past images from its Street View service online, to be matched up with the most recent take. Since the company has visited many major routes multiple times since starting their project to collect the globe, it's now possible to see how places have changed over time.
The feature isn't yet live for all users. But when it is, anyone using Google Maps on a browser will be able to click a clock icon in the upper lefthand corner of a street view map to scroll through the images over time. Here's Google's example of the Freedom Tower being built:
Users will also be able to view destruction in Onagawa, Japan after the 2011 earthquake, and construction of the 2014 World Cup stadiums, for example. Google released a handful of spliced images to show some of the more interesting changes, below:
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A neighborhood in Japan in July 2008, left, and in August 2011, after a major earthquake hit, right. (AP/Google)
This image shows what the Howard Theater in Washington looked like in July 2009, left, and after renovation in May 2012, right.. AP/Google
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/04/google-maps-now-lets-you-time-travel-through-its-street-view-archives/361118/
