You can now travel back in time on Google Street View mobile app

To mark the 15th year anniversary of the Google Maps' popular Street View feature, search engine giant Google has introduced fresh new features to the navigation app.

The most notable is the option to check how the popular landmarks in a city looked several years ago. This will give the users how the city has evolved over time and it will certainly bring nostalgia to native citizens.

The 360-degree Street View, a brainchild of Google co-founder Larry Page, started with the select cities of the world in 2007. Fast forward to 2022, Google Maps now has a huge database of 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories.

Here's how to check the timelines of a place
Step 1: When you are on Street View imagery of a place (on Google Maps or a standalone Street View app), tap anywhere on the photo to see information about the location.
Step 2: Then tap "See more dates" to see the historical imagery. Users will be able to see the place with a time stamp, dating back to when Street View launched in 2007.

The new timeline feature of Street View. Credit: Google

Users can browse each of the images to see a digital time capsule that shows how a place has changed — like how the Vessel in New York City’s Hudson Yards grew from the ground up. It should be noted that this feature was available for the Desktop version of Google Maps since 2014. Now, it is being made available on iPhones and Android mobiles through updates.

Google also revealed that it has begun adding new features to Google Maps to reflect changes to popular restaurants or any business places faster than before.

Also, the image quality Live View of places is being upgraded. The company is adding more Street View cars and trekkers and also testing a new camera that will fully roll out next year to help collect high-quality images in more places.

The new camera will be used to add more high-quality images to the Street View database. Credit: Google

"In the last three years, AI has helped us make over 25 billion updates to Maps. With our new immersive view launching later this year, you can easily glide down to street level on Maps and even check out the inside of a business as if you were walking around," Google added.

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