One of the most useful and disruptive features of Google Maps is celebrating its anniversary: Street View is fifteen years old. To celebrate, Google takes the jump in time, which we can already enjoy on the web, to mobile applications: from today we can navigate what the streets were like until fifteen years ago. The feature begins to roll out to all users.
Although Google Maps revolutionized maps by offering cartography completely free and accessible to anyone, it was technologies introduced later that finished shaping one of the most used products of the Alphabet company. Navigation offered access to excellent point-to-point guided navigation; Street View revolutionized maps by allowing us to know what places were physically like long before visiting them. Precisely, Street View is in luck: it receives years and juicy news.
Google Maps on mobile becomes a DeLorean
Since Google has stored the 3D scans of the streets over the years thanks to its Street View cars, the company made the history accessible at the click of a button so that anyone who navigates from their computer you can see what your street was like years ago. Now, as confirmed by Google itself, this function reaches mobile phones.
Thanks to the new leap in time, accessing past times from Google Maps is easier than ever; as long as the street in particular has received several visits from Google cars (it all depends on the importance of the place).
To achieve the effect on the maps, the following process must be carried out:
- Open the Google Maps application on your mobile.
- Find the place you want to visit and hold down on the building, street, park… you want until the 3D photo icon appears, the Street View icon.
- Go down to the information of the place and click on “See more dates”. You have the option to jump back in time to spherical images that Google has saved from previous years.
- Alternatively, or in case the function still does not appear to you, you can send you a link to the mobile of the Street View of previous years using a desktop browser, from the Google Maps web.
The Sagrada Familia over time on Google Maps for Android. From left to right: 2008, 2014 and 2022
The deployment may take time to reach all applications and users, although it is only “a matter of time”: Google ensures that the novelty begins to arrive as of today, May 24.
More information | Google Spain
