Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena? (opens in new tab)

Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic.

Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging.

Not that Google has been caught doing anything political before...

Google is not flying over the area itself right? perhaps they where using source maps with some sort of license agreement and the license expired, or there was a dispute.

It seems to me that it is in the favor of Google to gather the most up-to date maps, even if they can offer them in a limited window.

I wonder if the same is true for Google Earth, since I believe that uses higher quality / different maps in a lot of area's. (don't have it so I can't check)

I found that Google Maps also shows ~5 year old satellite images in Budapest, even though the copyright in the bottom right would tell otherwise. BUT if you toggle globe view, you get a more recent satellite image that seems to actually match the copyright date. (It can be toggled in Layers -> More, at the bottom, when on a desktop, not sure about the app)

Not entirely related, but Google Maps is still showing satellite images from 5 years ago in Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world, and it's not even updated once a year. I don't get it.

Probably because it makes sense to be building AI related stuff, so no one is working on that.

They even used to have an option to get notifications when new images for an area became available.

The latest update (that i made, i only update when asked) to the app doesn't allow to disable the suggestions anymore, before if you tapped twice everything except the map and your location disappeared.

I've been finding a lot of ~5 year old satellite and street view data. It's only anecdotal, but it seems like Google is not updating their imagery as often as they used to.

I wonder what the licensing fees for this type of imagery one could earn. Consider the cost of renting a plane and equipment for this type of footage and then the data management later. Would you be able to recoup that expense?

I wonder if there actually does exist updated to-the-minute imagery of various places, just not from sources publicly available on platforms like Google Maps?

That’s pretty strange. I wonder if Altadena restricted Google from updating the map imagery?

Maps are extremely political.

For Epstein island the US government has scrubbed/redated large periods of historic satellite imagery in order to hide construction of underground structures on each corner of the island. Chinese equivalents of Google earth offer clear images of different construction stages that the "US Coast Guard" prefers to hide.

If you check different satellite imagery providers it's always interesting to see what time periods are even available (paid or free), and if the imagery from an earlier date has been re-labeled to suggest it was taken at a later date.