Google Earth - Historical View

As I'm snowed in at my parents house (having a lot of fun! and no, that's not sarcasm), I downloaded Google Earth. I haven't played with this software since college --- but since I'm researching beach houses for our family vacation so I wanted to check out exactly how much beach space the house we want has available after hurricane season.

After I got the images I needed...  I played. Since I last used it, the Google Earth folks have added more functionality. Instead of only being able to see the image of the place Google chooses (usually from the previous day), you can now view each place at any time of day (ie.. you can see cars in the driveway at night, none during the day). I mean, it's a little bit startling, but probably not 100% accurate so I'm not going to worry too much... yet.

The coolest version now available, though: historical view. You can view places how they looked over 15 years ago. I saw my home in 1994- before the farmland next to us was bought and a ritzy subdivision was built. You can even scroll throughout the years. You can't go that far back for each place, for instance I could only see my grandfather's house back to 1998. Still, very cool. Makes you wonder what will be next in Google Earth and public sattelite imagery?

The final date I saw on my house was Jan 31, 2010 - which is tomorrow. I am hoping that was a glitch. My dad told me to see if I could view 2020 and, if I could, we would be "getting the hell outta here."

Download it and let me know what you think/ what you saw!