Google Earth’s New Timelapse Mode Shows How the World Has Changed in Last 37 Years

Even though Google has been improving its Google Earth platform by adding more and more features to help users explore the world from unique vantage points, today, the company delivered the “biggest update” to the platform since 2017. With this update, Google Earth has gained a new timelapse mode that lets users glide through time to see how a region or an area changed over the years.

Timelapse on Google Earth

The announcement comes via an official blog post. As per Rebecca Moore, the Director of Google Earth, the company took 24 million satellite images of the Earth from the past 37 years (from 1984 to 2020) to compile them into an interactive 4D experience. This is to showcase how the Earth has changed, for better or for worse, in the past four decades. It is a feature that aims to instill a need for change in the coming generations.

So, following today, users can navigate to g.co/Timelapse to explore the timelapse experience. They can search for any place for which they want to see the “time in motion”. In addition, Google has added interactive guided tours based on timelapse to their Voyager platform on Google Earth. These include timelapse experiences to showcase changes in forests, sources of energy, climate, and urban areas.

You can see the Timelapse feature in action in this official Youtube video:

Moreover, Google has added over 800 Timelapse videos in 2D and 3D for users to download and use for free or sit back and enjoy the changing-time experience on YouTube.

Now, to develop Timelapse for Google Earth, the company worked with experts from Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab. The feature is now live and you can check it out for yourself on Google Earth.