Google Earth should be renamed Google History

Liverpool Vision have recently complained to Google about their woefully out-of-date images of Liverpool on Google Earth, while new landmarks in London, such as Wembley Stadium have up-to-date images.

I’ve got to say, they have a very good point. Manchester does not fair much better. No.1 Deansgate, Harvey Nichols and Urbis are all shown as building sites, even though they were completed in 2003, 2003 and 2002 respectively.

Similarly, the large Tesco Extra store next to the Reebok stadium (which I know was open by November 2001) is still shown as the previous Fort Sterling (now Georgia Pacific) site.

Google say they are dependent on their digital image suppliers, but that is a poor excuse. Why order out-of-date images? Using images that are out of date by up to 5 years is extremely poor.

I suppose that we should count ourselves lucky that they show at a decent resolution at all. There are several built up areas of the UK (Warrington and Ponteland are just two examples) which are just a useless blurred image.

Come on Google, get your act together and get some decent up-to-date images. It’s spoiling an otherwise excellent program.

Update 31st March 2007

It appears that Manchester’s imagery has been updated, although it does tend to have a washed out appearance, as can be seen from the following screenshot. The new imagery roughly aligns to the M60.

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