Hands-on use of historical images from Google Earth

It was one of the best changes that Google Earth implemented in version 5, which, while allowing us to see which year images were published, makes it easier for us to use the one with the best resolution or relevance for our purposes. In many cases, because the most recent image has clouds that hide the object of our interest and in other cases because the level of detail was better. 

To see the history, the icon of the little clock is activated, then you can drag the bar to go to the dates of the image change. Although the most practical is with the arrows at the ends, which lead to the next one, above you can see the date it was recorded (possibly the year it was taken), not necessarily having been uploaded to Google Earth.

To show this example, a project that I want to georeference.

This is the January image of 2010, see that the boundary of the polygon can not even be seen, despite the fact that the buildings at the top are already built and for cadastre purposes are more important because they imply a reappraisal of the improvements.

This other is from November 30, 2007, 4 years earlier and see how clear the limit is. The new buildings cannot be seen above and the rest of the shot is covered in annoying cloudiness. The only thing that I can't resolve is that when downloading them with Stitchmaps the history bar appears disturbing in each shot; one of my technicians used to joke that we tell people that they are alien positions.

And the latter takes the preliminary draft of planned urbanization, safe in about four years can already be seen development.

In matters of precision... it is a calamity, because between one shot and another there are up to 14 meters of difference ... and neither is close to reality. But for impact purposes, if there is any gain from what Google Earth and Google Maps have achieved, it is that it has brought geolocation to everyday use.