As a hobby historian (not really haha) I'm interested in old streets and names particularly.
Especially here in Europe / Germany, where entire quarters where bombed to rubbles newer streets do not match neither namely nor spatially.
I loved how you could "move back in time" in street view. I think that has been killed too? There is a lovely Twitter/X account for Detroit tho: https://x.com/DetroitStreetVu
You can still go back in time on Street View. There's a "See more dates" link next to the address info in the top left (at least on the desktop Maps interface) that when you click it opens a film strip of different dated captures for that location. Here's the 2007 capture of 1 Embarcadero (outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco) for example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ArrucFgus9uMvdSaA
It's just that in Europe the data is much more sparse to begin with. In many places Google didn't go multiple times, so there just can't be older data. On some streets however I see that if the data was really old (before ~2010/2012) Google probably decided that the quality was so bad – well, it really is – that they do not make it available. So even if there were multiple passes it is not a must that this feature comes available.
Especially here in Europe / Germany, where entire quarters where bombed to rubbles newer streets do not match neither namely nor spatially.
I loved how you could "move back in time" in street view. I think that has been killed too? There is a lovely Twitter/X account for Detroit tho: https://x.com/DetroitStreetVu