Yes, I do that too. I was so glad when the picture changed finally to show the changes I had made after buying the house. :)

I used to, need to do it again.

I like to look over the area where I lived as a child and identify the now huge trees that I knew back then, find old landmarks, follow roads I used to bike, follow familiar little creeks till they hit a river, be all at once amused, sad, and happy to see the farm pond now surrounded by suburban homes. Most surprising is that a tiny dark pond, only about six feet across which was surrounded by willows and sassafras when I was a kid, a place where I could go to look at turtles and the huge tadpoles of bull frogs, well, that little pond is still identifiable on both Google Earth and Google Streets. It makes me feel very nostalgic.

Oh yes, just for fun.

Also I've looked up childhood homes -- places I can barely remember. I know we used to walk to school/church/library, now what roads would those have been? are the playgrounds still there? etc

Dh and I both do it. We love to look at our old homes and see what is still there and how the trees we planted are growing.

I have used it to visit parks from the air since they are ones beyond my hiking ability any more.

Please remember that the pictures are a snapshot in time and not current. Do not do what a fellow employee wanted to do. There was a truck parked in the driveway of her house and two people starting toward the door. I should just have let her call the police because someone she did not recognize was at her house. I finally got through to the other people that were telling her that she should call the police to just check it out. when I asked them to look at the picture then outside. The picture showed green trees and outside the window was snow.

I am glad I am not the only one. I should look what our old house is looking like now. It was build around 1890, was a real fixer upper. This was in Germany, we were barely finished with it when we had to move to the US.

I have, but lately I have spent quite a bit of time googling property I am looking at that is for sale.

Maifleur, that’s funny. I tried hard to find out when the last one was taken. Probably around October since a large dead Eucalyptus is missing.

No, I don't. But it did come in handy when I had a car accident years back. It was at a weirdly laid out intersection with several intersecting roads and on/off ramps and the satellite picture showed how the other guy was on the wrong side of the road. He was proven 100% at fault. Some how my son got a real close picture (closer than google earth) of the intersection from a government camera.

Yes, I do just for the fun of it.

I did street view of our home. It was a little more info than I wanted out there so I asked Google to blur out the home. Now when it's pulled up you can see the yard and a smudge. LOL

I used to a lot of times. Then, I moved. I just looked at both the old house, and the current house. Neither has been updated for a while. My stuff that went to Florida and back with me is still visible at the old house... and the new to me one, still doesn't show my touches.

It does take time. ;)

Moni

Ours were taken many years ago. We do not have those trees, or those vehicles, anymore. Haven't for years.

I have a few times

They haven't updated my property since at least 2014. My house doesn't even yet show up on it. Now that it's done, I'd love them to do so, will help with planning.

I do look at old homes. Interesting to see the changes.

I should look at my childhood home. I haven't been there in years.

My boss and I were in a Street View photo. We were cutting grass at a customer's house when the car went by. For reasons I forget now, I was looking at the picture of that intersection, and there we both were, in the picture of that house. It's since changed.

I had a stranger knock on the door one day. My DH had been participating on a boating forum, and noted what type of boat we had. This guy wanted to look at it, because he was hoping to buy one similar. He did some creepy Googling and found our address, then looked at Street View, saw the boat in the driveway, and knew he had the right place. It all turned out fine, and he was a nice guy.

Not Google Earth because I'm not interested in the aerial view, but I have googled addresses to see previous residences.

If I'm going someplace new, I like to see the street view to check out parking, what around nearby etc.

Aok, yes, people can't get way too much information from the internet.

Bob, I didn't realize you can see past images. Not sure where these dates are. How cool though to have that photo of your dad.

Yes I have...I've also looked up Mom's old house in FL or where DH grew up in NYC...it's fun just to see and be reminded. We also have houses around my neighborhood that are buried in the woods at the end of long driveways, so I've peeked from google just to see what kind of house might be there. I've also looked for where I've walked through the woods for landmarks to see where the trails actually took me. It's amazing how the distances through the woods are so deceiving compared to how long it takes to get there on the road.

At the bottom of the little box in the upper left corner of Street View, there is a small clock icon with an arrow. If you click the icon a window appears that allow you to see all of the dates for which they images at that location.

For instance this is a street view from Rio de Janeiro just behind the Municipal Theater, from Jan 2012.

and this one is from the same location in July 2012, after the building depicted above unexpectedly collapsed.

I also found that they have street view imagery for the inside of some of the nearby buildings, including the National Theater, and an Art Museum on the next block over, neither of which I had time to see when I was there.

I also found they have images of the Zoo, and from a trail going up through the Tijuca Rain Forest to a cliff that overlooks the ocean. I thought of doing that hike when I was there, but the warnings of occasional armed bandits dissuaded me.

Sure do. At one time, the pic showed the poster for our political party attached to the balcony. They've taken a photo since, and it's not there.

I've sent the pics to people who are looking at apts in our neighbourhood, to give them an idea of our bldg and the area.

I have before. :D

Funny story we looked up my cousin's house and they just happen to take the picture right as she was bending over to pick something up and her backside was facing the camera. haha :D

Yes a few times.

With a 12 year old in the house, we do it all the time. Most of the time now though, rather than looking at our house, we go exploring either via Google Earth or street view.

Since we do not travel much, we also do what Maifleur does and go exploring parks and cities this way. It is a lot of fun especially with a child. We've "walked" around places like the Eiffel Tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa. In some places the view is good, some places not so much, but you do get a little bit of a feel for the atmosphere of a place. We've also had a lot of fun dropping down into random places and exploring ordinary neighborhoods- Norway was my favorite so far.

Bob, I love the pic of your dad in the doorway. How special is that? :)

Iris,

There is a Greek proverb:

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

Thank you for planting trees.

Went looking for the place of my birth and childhood. Everything was gone! The house and barn and outbuildings and trees (Except, curiously, one.) and fences are gone. It is all now one big soybean (I think.) field.

ETA; the first home I actually owned was removed to make a freeway on ramp. One house I owned in rural Nevada became a mining company parking lot.

You can't see our home from street view, and I like it that way. We have 'walls' of arbor vitae, with only a gap for the driveway. The aerials don't show much, either -- trees near the house. (I see aerials when tracking houses for sale in our neighborhood.)

People sure can be nosy -- and crude . The salesman for our Maui condo air conditioners had our home billing address. When he called to arrange installation he blithely complimented us on our beautiful home, having Googled it. (Actually, he was looking at our next door neighbor's much grander property -- which I told him. I could tell that hHe didn't believe me!)

My childhood home looks tiny and squeezed in. A subsequent owner sold off the side lawn to a builder, who put up a nondescript little house.

Yes, not just my own house (which never seems to show much of the house and yard since the neighbor's tall trees block the angle of the photo) and childhood houses, but when I see addresses for my ancestors, I like to google to see what kind of house they lived in. Most of the homes in Cleveland that my great grandparents, grandparents, and even my dad , lived in from the 1890s to 1930s are gone, replaced by freeways, the baseball stadium, hospitals etc, and in the latter case, just a vacant lot. Likewise the homes in Detroit where my great-grandparents lived (and whole neighborhoods) have been obliterated -- and they were new developments when my gr-grandparents moved there.

I've often looked at the home my parents built from the basement up, when we lived in Prince George BC. This is it. The driveway is quite long and it's in the middle of the bush 10 miles outside of town. Could be closer to town if city limits have moved in 40 years. ;) But it's on 2 acres of land. I loved living there and was so sad when my parents decided to sell it to move to the lower mainland. Whoever bought the house, turned the carport into a garage. I don't think I like that....

This is the first house my parents owned. I was five when we moved in and they sold it a year after we moved to BC (about the time they bought the land to build the house on I previously posted). My bedroom was next to the front door. I live walking distance to this house today.

Chisue, your description reminded me of a picture my daughter sent me a while ago. I was upset we had to take 2 very important cypresses down that died. They were blocking the view to the neighbors garage. She said this picture reminded her of me....It wasn’t a picture of your house, right?

Iris S -- Hee-hee! No, but isn't that a hoot? I guess someone didn't want to sit out in the middle of nowhere, exposed to the wind and the world for miles around.

We had an odd neighbor in the 1950's development where we raised our DS. His house was the smallest model and on the smallest lot, right in the middle of a block. He said he'd always wanted to live in a forest, so about twenty years ago he started planting trees, a foot apart, in his front and back yards. He sure has his privacy now! Poor neighbors! Who wants to buy a house next door to THAT?

When a town writes ordinances, who would ever have thought you'd need one against planting *too many* trees?

I do not know about other towns but here you are not supposed to plant a tree within ten feed of a property line. I did not know that when I pushed a contorted willow from a floral gift into the ground and it grew. It really was too close to our house but I finally had to remove it when my neighbor complained. She complained about everything including thinking I needed to kill all the honeybees that came to my flowers.

Once well established willow could have been maintained as a shrub, cut down to a stump or short trunk at the end of each winter. They often look better pruned in that manner anyway.

Maifleur, I don’t think I could live like this again. I loved the house we restored in Germany, but the neighbor .was literally 3 feet from ours ( and he walked in whenever he wanted while we were working). Now I have 5 acres. There was pretty much nothing but grass when we came here 25 years ago. I have been planting ever since. The difference has been amazing. Not just in the amount of pollinators but for example I haven’t seen a house sparrow the whole year. Now I have a lot of bluebirds

Embothrium you did not notice or do not know what type of willow it was. Some types are just not happy as shrubs. They are supposed to form small trees not ones that were two feet across at the base. It was at least 5 feet from my fence.

Iris luckily she finally moved but even from the neighbor on her other side she was always complaining about something. When the city put the new storm sewer in front of our houses we did not want them to work during the day because she would see them working.

My childhood home burned down (along with most of the homes on that block, it's a bad area now). My elementary school was a block away, it has been torn down. Google shows the area (in Youngstown, Ohio) It was a nice older area when I lived there in the 1950's.

Iris...last night I was up to really late doing this. I had done it years ago but forgot so did my house and found that it featured the whole length of the side and very little of the front. It's on a corner lot on three city lots The side street view was about three years old because my neighbor's house was for sale and our picket fence needed to be repaired. So the camera went up the alley behind my house. When it went to the main street it passed my house with two flags hanging out front..one on the porch and one on a pole. So this shot was three years ago because I took the one flag down. However, when I put the arrow down the street, there was only one flag and a historical plaque which was put in front of the house less than a year ago. So weird.

I went to my childhood home which was a lovely 1850 clapboard house with dark green louvered shutters. Now it a big ugly white aluminum box. I went to my parents' house where the other half of my childhood was spent and it's not looking nearly as nice as when the parents had it. But the house I really wanted to see was first house we owned when we were in our early 20's and had babies. I can't get on the street. When I type in the address it goes to the street where there is a sign for my street but it won't let you go down it. I can see the stone chimney from the other street and that's it. Disappointing.

I haven't in a while. I like to look at ours on our county GIS (Geographical Information System) as I can get more info, including shots taken years ago. I also had a friend do a really cool drone video, including a sound track!