Google Street View adds 'time machine' feature

With the new Google Street View feature, users can keep track of how famous a place has changed over time.

Currently, you can use the Viewto feature of Google Street View to explore famous places around the world, such as the zoo, the famous national park or even the ocean floor.

Google's Street View director, Mr. Vinay Shet, calls the new feature 'the world's digital time machine'.

With the new Street View feature, users can go back in time to see how a particular location has changed over time.

Google has collected images from Street View collections since 2007 to create interactive timelines.

Shet said: 'This new feature can act as a digital timeline of recent history, such as the reconstruction activity after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan. You can even experience different seasons, you will be like walking on Italian roads in both summer and winter. '

Street View locations with time-lapse photos will have a clock icon in the top left corner. When a user clicks on this icon, a slider will appear, allowing you to move between photos from previous years and seasons.

Viewto currently only works on Google Maps for desktop version. It will take some time before Google takes the new feature to work for all users.