Tag Archives: Google Earth

Our most detailed view of Earth across space and time

In 2013, we released Google Earth Timelapse, our most comprehensive picture of the Earth's changing surface. This interactive experience enabled people to explore these changes like never before—to watch the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, we're making our largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016. We’ve even teamed up again with our friends at TIME to give you an updated take on compelling locations. 

Miruuixiang

Meandering river in Nyingchi, Tibet, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Leveraging the same techniques we used to improve Google Maps and Google Earth back in June, the new Timelapse reveals a sharper view of our planet, with truer colors and fewer distracting artifacts. A great example of this is San Francisco and Oakland in California:

Bay Bridge
San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge reconstruction [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

There’s much more to see, including glacial movement in Antarctica, urban growth, forest gain and loss, and infrastructure development:

Shirase Glacier Antarctica

Shirase Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus)

Hourihan Glacier

Hourihan Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Dalian Liaoning

Dalian Liaoning, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Nuflo

Nuflo de Chavez, Bolivia [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

O'Hare Chicago

O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Using Google Earth Engine, we sifted through about three quadrillion pixels—that's 3 followed by 15 zeroes—from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. For this latest update, we had access to more images from the past, thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program, and fresh images from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2.

We took the best of all those pixels to create 33 images of the entire planet, one for each year. We then encoded these new 3.95 terapixel global images into just over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles, made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab's Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time.

Ft. McMurray

Alberta Tar Sands, Canada [View in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

To view the new Timelapse, head over to the Earth Engine website. You can also view the new annual mosaics in Google Earth's historical imagery feature on desktop, or spend a mesmerizing 40 minutes watching this YouTube playlist. Happy exploring!

*Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey. Images also contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2015- 2016.

Our most detailed view of Earth across space and time

In 2013, we released Google Earth Timelapse, our most comprehensive picture of the Earth's changing surface. This interactive experience enabled people to explore these changes like never before—to watch the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, we're making our largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016. We’ve even teamed up again with our friends at TIME to give you an updated take on compelling locations. 

Miruuixiang

Meandering river in Nyingchi, Tibet, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Leveraging the same techniques we used to improve Google Maps and Google Earth back in June, the new Timelapse reveals a sharper view of our planet, with truer colors and fewer distracting artifacts. A great example of this is San Francisco and Oakland in California:

Bay Bridge
San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge reconstruction [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

There’s much more to see, including glacial movement in Antarctica, urban growth, forest gain and loss, and infrastructure development:

Shirase Glacier Antarctica
Shirase Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus)
Hourihan Glacier
Hourihan Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
Dalian Liaoning
Dalian Liaoning, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
Nuflo
Nuflo de Chavez, Bolivia [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
O'Hare Chicago
O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Using Google Earth Engine, we sifted through about three quadrillion pixels—that's 3 followed by 15 zeroes—from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. For this latest update, we had access to more images from the past, thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program, and fresh images from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2.

We took the best of all those pixels to create 33 images of the entire planet, one for each year. We then encoded these new 3.95 terapixel global images into just over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles, made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab's Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time.

Ft. McMurray

Alberta Tar Sands, Canada [View in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

To view the new Timelapse, head over to the Earth Engine website. You can also view the new annual mosaics in Google Earth's historical imagery feature on desktop, or spend a mesmerizing 40 minutes watching this YouTube playlist. Happy exploring!

*Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey. Images also contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2015- 2016.

Source: Google LatLong


Our most detailed view of Earth across space and time

In 2013, we released Google Earth Timelapse, our most comprehensive picture of the Earth's changing surface. This interactive experience enabled people to explore these changes like never before—to watch the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, and the impressive urban expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada. Today, we're making our largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery, petabytes of new data, and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016. We’ve even teamed up again with our friends at TIME to give you an updated take on compelling locations. 

Miruuixiang

Meandering river in Nyingchi, Tibet, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Leveraging the same techniques we used to improve Google Maps and Google Earth back in June, the new Timelapse reveals a sharper view of our planet, with truer colors and fewer distracting artifacts. A great example of this is San Francisco and Oakland in California:

Bay Bridge
San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge reconstruction [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

There’s much more to see, including glacial movement in Antarctica, urban growth, forest gain and loss, and infrastructure development:

Shirase Glacier Antarctica
Shirase Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus)
Hourihan Glacier
Hourihan Glacier, Antarctica [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
Dalian Liaoning
Dalian Liaoning, China [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
Nuflo
Nuflo de Chavez, Bolivia [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)
O'Hare Chicago
O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois [view in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

Using Google Earth Engine, we sifted through about three quadrillion pixels—that's 3 followed by 15 zeroes—from more than 5,000,000 satellite images. For this latest update, we had access to more images from the past, thanks to the Landsat Global Archive Consolidation Program, and fresh images from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2.

We took the best of all those pixels to create 33 images of the entire planet, one for each year. We then encoded these new 3.95 terapixel global images into just over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles, made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab's Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time.

Ft. McMurray

Alberta Tar Sands, Canada [View in Timelapse] (Image credit: Landsat / Copernicus*)

To view the new Timelapse, head over to the Earth Engine website. You can also view the new annual mosaics in Google Earth's historical imagery feature on desktop, or spend a mesmerizing 40 minutes watching this YouTube playlist. Happy exploring!

*Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey. Images also contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2015- 2016.

Google Earth: The 25-Year Search

Remember back to the time when you first opened Google Earth. Where did you fly? Nearly all of us search for the same place: Home. The starting point. Where we fit into the bigger picture, and one way we define our sense of identity.

Imagine if you didn't know where "home" was? What would you search for first?

In 1986, 5-year-old Saroo Brierley fell asleep on a train parked at a rural station in central India. He awoke to find himself locked in an empty carriage barrelling through the Indian countryside to an unknown destination. After two days and nearly 1600 kilometers, the train reached its final stop, the enormous Howrah station in the sprawling Indian megacity, Kolkata. Saroo disembarked alone, far away from family and no way to get home. Living on the streets for months, Saroo survived a series of harrowing encounters before he was taken to an orphanage. In time, he was adopted by an Australian couple and brought to Tasmania.

Saroo

The Brierleys gave Saroo a loving home and a second chance, but memories of his birth family haunted him. As he grew older, these echos became louder until his early 20's when he was finally compelled to search for his lost home and family. Right around this time, Saroo heard about a new program called Google Earth. He realized he could use the tool's satellite imagery to find familiar landmarks, and lead him to the train station from his fleeting memories of that fateful night. Night after night for three years, Saroo followed train lines from space, combing through thousands of stations until one day in early 2012, he finally found the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Thanks to his unwavering determination, Saroo reunited with his birth mother after 25 years. Saroo's improbable story has been a source of inspiration to all of us on the Earth team and to many around the world. We're especially excited his story will reach new audiences with the release of the new film, Lion, on November 25.
Earth

To celebrate the film's upcoming release, we invite you to retrace Saroo’s journey through the Finding Home experience now available in Google Earth’s Voyager layer. The experience takes you behind-the-scenes of Saroo’s search—what he used to guide him, the odds he faced, and how with a lot of will and a bit of luck, he was able to find home.

Google Earth: The 25-Year Search

Remember back to the time when you first opened Google Earth. Where did you fly? Nearly all of us search for the same place: Home. The starting point. Where we fit into the bigger picture, and one way we define our sense of identity.

Imagine if you didn't know where "home" was? What would you search for first?

In 1986, 5-year-old Saroo Brierley fell asleep on a train parked at a rural station in central India. He awoke to find himself locked in an empty carriage barrelling through the Indian countryside to an unknown destination. After two days and nearly 1600 kilometers, the train reached its final stop, the enormous Howrah station in the sprawling Indian megacity, Kolkata. Saroo disembarked alone, far away from family and no way to get home. Living on the streets for months, Saroo survived a series of harrowing encounters before he was taken to an orphanage. In time, he was adopted by an Australian couple and brought to Tasmania.

Saroo

The Brierleys gave Saroo a loving home and a second chance, but memories of his birth family haunted him. As he grew older, these echos became louder until his early 20's when he was finally compelled to search for his lost home and family. Right around this time, Saroo heard about a new program called Google Earth. He realized he could use the tool's satellite imagery to find familiar landmarks, and lead him to the train station from his fleeting memories of that fateful night. Night after night for three years, Saroo followed train lines from space, combing through thousands of stations until one day in early 2012, he finally found the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Thanks to his unwavering determination, Saroo reunited with his birth mother after 25 years. Saroo's improbable story has been a source of inspiration to all of us on the Earth team and to many around the world. We're especially excited his story will reach new audiences with the release of the new film, Lion, on November 25.
Earth

To celebrate the film's upcoming release, we invite you to retrace Saroo’s journey through the Finding Home experience now available in Google Earth’s Voyager layer. The experience takes you behind-the-scenes of Saroo’s search—what he used to guide him, the odds he faced, and how with a lot of will and a bit of luck, he was able to find home.

Source: Google LatLong


Google Earth: The 25-Year Search

Remember back to the time when you first opened Google Earth. Where did you fly? Nearly all of us search for the same place: Home. The starting point. Where we fit into the bigger picture, and one way we define our sense of identity.

Imagine if you didn't know where "home" was? What would you search for first?

In 1986, 5-year-old Saroo Brierley fell asleep on a train parked at a rural station in central India. He awoke to find himself locked in an empty carriage barrelling through the Indian countryside to an unknown destination. After two days and nearly 1600 kilometers, the train reached its final stop, the enormous Howrah station in the sprawling Indian megacity, Kolkata. Saroo disembarked alone, far away from family and no way to get home. Living on the streets for months, Saroo survived a series of harrowing encounters before he was taken to an orphanage. In time, he was adopted by an Australian couple and brought to Tasmania.

Saroo

The Brierleys gave Saroo a loving home and a second chance, but memories of his birth family haunted him. As he grew older, these echos became louder until his early 20's when he was finally compelled to search for his lost home and family. Right around this time, Saroo heard about a new program called Google Earth. He realized he could use the tool's satellite imagery to find familiar landmarks, and lead him to the train station from his fleeting memories of that fateful night. Night after night for three years, Saroo followed train lines from space, combing through thousands of stations until one day in early 2012, he finally found the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Thanks to his unwavering determination, Saroo reunited with his birth mother after 25 years. Saroo's improbable story has been a source of inspiration to all of us on the Earth team and to many around the world. We're especially excited his story will reach new audiences with the release of the new film, Lion, on November 25.
Earth

To celebrate the film's upcoming release, we invite you to retrace Saroo’s journey through the Finding Home experience now available in Google Earth’s Voyager layer. The experience takes you behind-the-scenes of Saroo’s search—what he used to guide him, the odds he faced, and how with a lot of will and a bit of luck, he was able to find home.

Source: Google LatLong


Meet the Google Earth and Google Trends Live Cases

Meet the Google Earth and Google Trends Live Cases 

Considering the amount of time we spend with our phones, it's no surprise that they've become one of our most personal possessions. They allow us to not only connect with those we love, but also to explore and discover the world around us, from getting the latest news to finding inspiration for our next adventure. We think the cases we choose should reflect our style and interest.

Today we’re excited to launch a new line of Live Cases designed exclusively for Google’s new Pixel phones that do more than just protect your phone. The Google Earth and Google Trends Live Cases enable you to experience new places around the world and stay up-to-date with the latest trends, with the companion live wallpaper. 

LiveCase_Pixel_Combo.png

Always know what’s trending

The Google Trends Live Case comes with a companion live wallpaper that charts the top trending Google Searches right on your home screen. Topics like the newest movie releases, hottest sports teams, and the latest social trends are brought to life through a visualization that represents its popularity during the last 24 hours. Double-tapping the screen surfaces additional trending topics, and pressing on the Live Case’s shortcut button takes you to the Google Search results for that topic.

Pixel_MannequinChallenge.png

See the world in the palm of your hand

The Google Earth Live Case wraps beautiful imagery from Google Earth all around your Pixel phone. From the ice formations of Antarctica to the beaches of the South Pacific, the Live Case designs extend to your home screen through Live Case’s companion wallpaper. The wallpaper updates everyday with a new location from a curated collection of images from Google Earth, and when a landscape piques your interest, just press the shortcut button to explore the location in more detail on the Google Maps app.

Earth_3Case.gif

Exclusively for Pixel, Phone by Google

Discover the world with your own Google Earth and Google Trends Live Case. Available starting today  from the Google Store, Verizon and Best Buy in the US.

Google Earth VR — Bringing the whole wide world to virtual reality

The world has so many beautiful and amazing places to visit. If we're lucky, we're able to travel and see a few of them. But even the most active travelers can only see a fraction. What if we could see them all?

Ten years ago, Google Earth began as an effort to help people everywhere explore our planet. And now, with more than two billion downloads, many have. Today, we are introducing Google Earth VR as our next step to help the world see the world. With Earth VR, you can fly over a city, stand at the top of the highest peaks, and even soar into space.

Now, at 196.9 million square miles, we know the world is pretty big, so we’ve made it easy to find great places to visit. Earth VR comes with cinematic tours and hand-picked destinations that send you to the Amazon River, the Manhattan skyline, the Grand Canyon, the Swiss Alps, and more.

Google Earth - Flying
Flying in Earth VR

You can download Google Earth VR today in the Steam Store for free. Like Tilt Brush, Earth VR is launching first on the HTC Vive. Stay tuned for more updates on Google Earth across other platforms next year.

Project Sunroof New Data Explorer Tool

Google has always been a proponent of  clean energy, and solar power has been a central part of our vision. Over the past year, Project Sunroof has been helping homeowners explore whether they should go solar - offering solar estimates for over 43 million houses across 42 states. Solar installations today are growing rapidly, but there remains tremendous untapped potential as only a half a percent of US electricity comes from solar power.

Today we’re excited to be taking Project Sunroof a step further by launching a new data explorer tool to enable solar estimates for entire communities, in addition to individual homes, by leveraging 3D rooftop geometry from Google Earth to estimate the solar potential for millions of rooftops in America.  The tool helps communities, cities and municipalities easily visualize how many rooftops are suitable to install solar, how much power they could collectively generate, as well as how much carbon could be displaced by deploying rooftop solar at scale. Sunroof’s solar potential reports can also be easily shared amongst community members, researchers and policymakers directly from the the tool itself. Anyone can use this tool for free, by simply entering in a state, county, city, or zip code to receive a custom analysis.
Sunroof Image 1
Sunroof Image 2
Sunroof Image 3

Click here to see the solar potential of your community


Rooftop solar is a viable option for many cities today. Sunroof’s data explorer found that in more than 90% of communities that the tool covers within 42 states nationwide, well over half the rooftops are viable for solar. Today, cities like Denver and organizations like League of Cities see great value in using the data explorer tool to evaluate whether solar can drive economic savings and growth, as well as help transition energy consumption to lower carbon sources for their communities. Here’s what they have to say;

Cooper Martin, Program Director of the Sustainable Cities Institute,  League of Cities

“Our Sustainable Cities Institute program aims to provide guidance and information for governments that want to pursue sustainability and ensuring that solar is easy, fast and cheap to install. Sunroof's Data Explorer tool can help inform city stakeholders about the opportunity of solar energy, and the work that is needed to support solar-friendly policies. ”
Sunroof Image 4

Thomas J. Herrod, Climate and Policy analyst, City of Denver

“As a City with a bold and ambitious goal of reducing 80% of Greenhouse Gas emissions by the year 2050,  Project Sunroof data is a key tool in our arsenal of potential strategies.  Rooftop solar is already a viable option within Denver, but this tool helps us refine our efforts to ensure equity in our outreach, efficiency in our efforts, and measurement in our management resources.  Of equal importance is the ability to identify where rooftop solar may not be an option – helping us identify areas where other renewable energy programs offered by our Utility can fill the gap.  We are thrilled to be able to utilize Project Sunroof in our Climate mitigation efforts and help inform our community about the bountiful resource that renewable energy can provide.”

Mark Trout, CIO, Vivint

“In previous analysis we've done, comparing Project Sunroof data estimates to actual systems performing in the field, we've found Google's information to be a highly accurate source for predicting the solar performance of a rooftop system. At Vivint Solar we are constantly focusing on how to better delight our customers and advance the solar industry through leading innovation. Project Sunroof is a prime example how technology can improve the consumer experience and accelerate solar deployment here in the US.”

The release of the data explorer tool marks another milestone across the Project Sunroof initiative where the use of Google’s high quality information has the potential to accelerate the growth of solar by capturing the public imagination, and helping communities make smarter decisions in their transition to cleaner power sources.

Project Sunroof New Data Explorer Tool

Google has always been a proponent of  clean energy, and solar power has been a central part of our vision. Over the past year, Project Sunroof has been helping homeowners explore whether they should go solar - offering solar estimates for over 43 million houses across 42 states. Solar installations today are growing rapidly, but there remains tremendous untapped potential as only a half a percent of US electricity comes from solar power.

Today we’re excited to be taking Project Sunroof a step further by launching a new data explorer tool to enable solar estimates for entire communities, in addition to individual homes, by leveraging 3D rooftop geometry from Google Earth to estimate the solar potential for millions of rooftops in America.  The tool helps communities, cities and municipalities easily visualize how many rooftops are suitable to install solar, how much power they could collectively generate, as well as how much carbon could be displaced by deploying rooftop solar at scale. Sunroof’s solar potential reports can also be easily shared amongst community members, researchers and policymakers directly from the the tool itself. Anyone can use this tool for free, by simply entering in a state, county, city, or zip code to receive a custom analysis.
Sunroof Image 1
Sunroof Image 2
Sunroof Image 3

Click here to see the solar potential of your community


Rooftop solar is a viable option for many cities today. Sunroof’s data explorer found that in more than 90% of communities that the tool covers within 42 states nationwide, well over half the rooftops are viable for solar. Today, cities like Denver and organizations like League of Cities see great value in using the data explorer tool to evaluate whether solar can drive economic savings and growth, as well as help transition energy consumption to lower carbon sources for their communities. Here’s what they have to say;

Cooper Martin, Program Director of the Sustainable Cities Institute,  League of Cities

“Our Sustainable Cities Institute program aims to provide guidance and information for governments that want to pursue sustainability and ensuring that solar is easy, fast and cheap to install. Sunroof's Data Explorer tool can help inform city stakeholders about the opportunity of solar energy, and the work that is needed to support solar-friendly policies. ”
Sunroof Image 4

Thomas J. Herrod, Climate and Policy analyst, City of Denver

“As a City with a bold and ambitious goal of reducing 80% of Greenhouse Gas emissions by the year 2050,  Project Sunroof data is a key tool in our arsenal of potential strategies.  Rooftop solar is already a viable option within Denver, but this tool helps us refine our efforts to ensure equity in our outreach, efficiency in our efforts, and measurement in our management resources.  Of equal importance is the ability to identify where rooftop solar may not be an option – helping us identify areas where other renewable energy programs offered by our Utility can fill the gap.  We are thrilled to be able to utilize Project Sunroof in our Climate mitigation efforts and help inform our community about the bountiful resource that renewable energy can provide.”

Mark Trout, CIO, Vivint

“In previous analysis we've done, comparing Project Sunroof data estimates to actual systems performing in the field, we've found Google's information to be a highly accurate source for predicting the solar performance of a rooftop system. At Vivint Solar we are constantly focusing on how to better delight our customers and advance the solar industry through leading innovation. Project Sunroof is a prime example how technology can improve the consumer experience and accelerate solar deployment here in the US.”

The release of the data explorer tool marks another milestone across the Project Sunroof initiative where the use of Google’s high quality information has the potential to accelerate the growth of solar by capturing the public imagination, and helping communities make smarter decisions in their transition to cleaner power sources.

Source: Google LatLong