Mysterious Anomaly on Google Street View

[orangenasturtium]

Out of curiosity, I decided to look up my home on Street View. I was a bit surprised to find that the photo is from 2008 but, even stranger, every time you move forward one click on the arrow, the image is from a different year, say a sunny summer day in 2017, then a rainy day in 2009, then, then spring flowers in 2012.

I've tried a few other locations and it is mostly all from the same date for each street. I could see how they might need to use the odd image from a previous year if something blocks the view but this is every single photo jumping forward and back in time.

AIBU to ask whether your Street View is a snapshot in time or a time warping collage? It's quite interesting to see how the street has changed but somewhat bizarre when front doors change colour, plants grow and shrink and scaffolding disappears as you move along the road

We have 4 different views of our house, the ariel view is from 3 years ago, we have a view from our service road from 7 years ago, going on the service road it's 8 years ago one way and last year from the other.

It's amazing how many cars we've had as that's how I can work it out.

I'm on streetview waiting for a bus.

This is a new pastime @Littlecaf I have not encountered the back end of any buses blocking my view, only ex-MIL's back end.

That's interesting @TheSunIsStillShining. Ironically, the pictures they have chosen have shit weather in lots of the old ones, quite a few with big vehicles blocking the view (looking at you, Trevor in the Raspberry Van), and loads of people, which is unusual, despite being a busy city, you don't get many pedestrians in the residental back streets (or big vehicles), just locals. The two most distinctive elements in the area are a gold Lamborghini that often parks around here and the armed guard outside one of the "blurry buildings", both of which have made it to Street View. It's almost as if they put up the rejects by accident

How can you tell what year the footage was filmed?

DH with DD (on his shoulders, both with blurred faces but identifiable) were on street view twice on the walk home from taking big kid to school one day. I think the camera car went around the side street and back onto the main road and so caught them again. Sadly they have refilmed since, but for a while they were locally famous..

Haha I remember at school when using the computers, everyone would show each other their houses from the outside using street view. I was absolutely horrified to see myself peeping out of the window in my pajamas

Otherwise, I can see what my house used to look like when I press one particular arrow and when turning it around the other houses are also looking old. Lovely to see what the street used to look like.

Is there anyway to get them to come back and take another pic? Our house looks run down and we replaced front door/car/driveway since!!! Mil house in one pic it has hedges, next fencing !

If you access Street View on a desktop then you can scroll back through the years.

Any other Geoguesser fans?
www.geoguessr.com/

It says "image captured on month/year" at the bottom of the image @BrennieGirl.

How do you scroll back through the years? @FlamingoAndJohn

I looked at mine a couple of months ago in lo lockdown and my ds7 buggy was sat out the front from when he was around one.

Just looked again and it's now a pic from June 2015 and the gardens a mess with stuff as we were getting building work done 😒

Kind of sad the buggy pics gone but strange they would update the pic in 2020 with one from June 2015.

My late dad is in his front garden on street view, luckily they don't update his road as it's so remote,the image is about 15 years old

My mum is a young 65 but refuses the internet she is a cleaner so doesn't use it for her work. She rang me one day to say that someone where she works had shown her their home address on streetview and although she had not said anything she was annoyed that my dad had told her he had gone to work when clearly the car was still outside the house and had been all day. She had gone home and had words about his lies and illicit time off. To make it worse she had also seen that he was in the garden. My dad was mortified and so was my mum when I told her it wasn't a live camera. She thought is was a powerful satellite camera. . They are ace!

@orangenasturtium

It says "image captured on month/year" at the bottom of the image *@BrennieGirl*.

How do you scroll back through the years? @FlamingoAndJohn

You need to be on a computer rather than a phone or tablet. If you go to the top right there is a little window. In that there is a clock. Clock that and it will show you a time line of all the different years.

I didn't know anyone could request to have their home removed. Perhaps that could explain the jumpiness. I can imagine lots of my neighbours objecting to being on Street View. Maybe they are using old images from before the request was made to avoid blurring out an entire neighbourhood. A local hotel has had their image blurred out. That seems counterintuitive!

No, when you request your house is blocked it's not shown at all in Streetview (except maybe very obliquely from further down the street). The camera just skips the bit of the street with blocked properties on it. But it is still shown from overhead in the Google maps satellite view.

On the other side of our street the houses have a rough track between their back gardens and those of the next street over. The Streetview car decided to drive down there, with the camera on the roof tall enough to see over their back fences and gates. Some of the neighbours were most definitely not amused.

My mum, was captured pushing my son in his buggy. He was a toddler and is clutching a toy. That was about 8 years ago. I still have the image on my phone. I liked Mum's choice of outfits for him for his Google debut.

A house near us is blurry, because a famous person lives in it.

Ours used to swap dates at my next door neighbours.

Drive virtually up the street and their old car was parked outside their house with my neighbour standing beside it.

Drive virtually dow the street, and it was their new car parked.

Sadly the old car has now gone from Streetview, having been replaced by a horse box which none of us recognise!

Thanks @FlamingoAndJohn

It seems my house only has one image in 2008. It's a one way street so I've no idea how we got missed off all the other years.

No, when you request your house is blocked it's not shown at all in Streetview (except maybe very obliquely from further down the street).

Blurry building with the armed guard has every last little bit of it obscured, even from afar, except the most recent image. And if you use the clock thing that FlamingoAndJohn pointed out, it is visible in all of the old photos, even if it's blurred in the same image on normal Street View IYSWIM. That makes it pretty pointless blurring it in the first place.

For a while you could see a relative of mine taking delivery of the steel frame of new cow shed on street view. When it was updated a couple of years later you can see the built shed. You can also see the farm dogs at the gate investigating who is going past (Google did not obscure their faces lol).

I'm on mine! I'm bloody thrilled! I was out walking when Mr Google rolled past. I'll be gutted when they replace me..

One of my favourites is a road through an alpine meadow in Switzerland where you get the winter snow scene travelling in one direction and summer wildflowers when you turn and go the opposite way.

I like looking up my old house from 12 years ago. I had just had dd and have new baby flowers in the window

I “walked” around a viLlangennith in the Lake District on Google Maps to get an idea of where we were going that day on holiday.

There were a few people and of course they’d blurred their faces, but there was a dog with one group of people and they’d blurred out its face, too!

Made me laugh.

*a village

You used to see my FIL hanging out the washing in street view, but it's sadly been updated.

It was a good laugh at the time because whenever MIL moaned about him not doing housework he would mention that he's always hanging out the washing