Made an interesting discovery yesterday. Did you realize that GE does not always open showing the most recent image? I have no idea what controls this... Check the little box in the lower left-hand corner of the image pane to see what you are viewing.
Click "view" and see if you have "Historical Imagery" turned on.. That allows you to choose different time periods depending on the google image files.
Related to that, I've seen Bing Maps Bird's Eye View where the north view showed a vacant site while the south view showed a large commercial site with buildings and parking. I've also seen an east view with no fence, and a west view with a large fence.
Take all those aerials with a grain of salt.
A client explained it to me a few months ago.
The little clock icon on the top will let you access all the historical photos.
You can push the slide backwards to get older phots or forward to get newer ones.
This view even shows a 1937 photo.
I don't know where the 1937 photo is but if you zoom out and click on the icon it will show you dates for all the photos in the view. And if you zoom out far enough you will start seeing really old photos that have been loaded into the Google database. On open Google shows the best quality photo-so they say.
Even the most "recent" image may still be a few years old. A year or two ago, my brother and I were talking on the phone while he was looking at my house on GE. He wondered out loud when the picture was taken. He discovered a date that was about a year old. I instantly told him that was NOT when the picture was taken: I asked him to look at the boat in the yard next door to me. That boat had been sold and removed 3-4 years prior. I figured it might be the copyright date instead.
Edit: I just checked Google Maps and the same boat is still shown next door to me, now a good 5-6 years after it was removed.
GE also has a location problem.
When I type in my address I get get an image of my back neighbour's house. The same occurs if I use my next door neighbour's address.
This often affects directions generated in google maps. They direct me to start the journey in the street of my back neighbour. This would require me to drive through the back fence and his side yard to get to the street.
Go figure
Cheers
Graham
