In addition to being just plain fun, historical imagery is a powerful tool for exposing changes to our neighborhoods, communities, and the environment. That's all there is to it! Now you can fly around to different spots in the world and explore our archives to see what imagery we have to show of the location. If there are just too many ticks marks grouped together try using the zoom in and zoom out buttons to expand or contract the timeline. You can move the slider back and forth along the timeline or use the arrow buttons in the upper left corner to step from one date to the next. The tick marks on the slider represent images in our database that are available for your current view. The time slider allows you to change your view to imagery which is older than the date shown on the slider.

The historical imagery time slider will appear just beneath the toolbar. To transition to historical imagery mode, open up Google Earth 5.0 and click on the clock icon in the toolbar: So now that you know the backstory, you're probably ready to dive right in and take a look.

Google earth historical images