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Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

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Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#41

Post by bastawhiz »

paganel wrote: post #35
bastawhiz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my first thought. The simplest explanation is that they lost access to the recent imagery. If you were going to build a system like this, you'd show the most recent imagery for an area that you have access to. If one of your license agreements ends, it might mean you end up showing less desirable data, but at least you're showing data.

> The simplest explanation is that they lost access to the recent imagery. I Reasonable explanation, but they didn't, for example this is the Google Earth link [1] with satellite imagery of the area from back in September 2025, the most recent satellite imagery they seem to have from there. The fire damage can clearly be seen. So there must be some other reason behind it. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Altad…

As the sibling comment noted, Earth is a different product. If your license pays out by tiles served, Earth is far cheaper to service. Maps is in phones, cars, website contact pages, third party apps, etc. Multiple orders of magnitude more exposure.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#42

Post by selectodude »

866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #27

Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic. Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging. Not that Google has been caught doing anything political before...

There’s plenty of evidence of the ineptitude and corruption of the Los Angeles government located in the actual city. I don’t think anybody in LA is hinging a vote on the rebuilding process in Alta Dena.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#43

Post by skobes »

trunkiedozer wrote: post #34
brookst wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence of such an elaborate scheme? Are voters looking on Google Maps to validate claims about the fires, in some kind of mass trend that produces evidence? Because it really sounds like a conspiracy theory draped over a pretty tangential fact. But I’d love to be wrong if there is evidence (“Google did something totally different but also bad” is not evidence).

[flagged]

The map tile backend is in the middle of a multi year effort to migrate from the Flippity Service to the Floopity Service. The FlippityFlooper was believed to have finished the necessary format conversions for all map tiles in the US and Canada but 5% of the data sources were missed due to a bug that was discovered after the creator of FlippityFlooper had been promoted and changed teams, so those Floopity tiles are filled in from an older source. A junior engineer vibe-coded a stopgap fallback called FloopityFlipper that redirects to legacy Flippity Service when Floopity staleness is detected, but that redirect broke three months later due to a change in an injected dependency's experiment configuration. A bug was auto-filed and marked P2 by an overworked product manager who slightly misunderstood the scope, but the FloopityFlipper engineer will probably have a look once they are back from paternity leave.

I made all of that up but it's more plausible than conspiracy theories.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#44

Post by neuronexmachina »

866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #27

Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic. Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging. Not that Google has been caught doing anything political before...

Altadena is part of unincorporated LA County, they don't vote in the City of Los Angeles elections.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#45

Post by rurp »

Does anyone know of a good service for getting more up to date satellite images that can be used with other software, such as a tile server, vector map, or similar?

I'm looking for some personal projects and have had trouble finding anything in the middle ground between free and enterprise offerings. I don't mind paying a modest amount but something like Planet is beyond my budget, unless they have some personal tier I'm not aware of.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#46

Post by jakeydus »

rurp wrote: post #45

Does anyone know of a good service for getting more up to date satellite images that can be used with other software, such as a tile server, vector map, or similar? I'm looking for some personal projects and have had trouble finding anything in the middle ground between free and enterprise offerings. I don't mind paying a modest amount but something like Planet is beyond my budget, unless they have some personal tier…

ArcGIS Location Platform is a pay-as-you-go solution and their APIs are very generously priced IME.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#47

Post by kjkjadksj »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #44
866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #27

Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic. Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging. Not that Google has been caught doing anything political before...

Altadena is part of unincorporated LA County, they don't vote in the City of Los Angeles elections.

Palisades fire damage has also been removed from the mapping.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#48

Post by OkayPhysicist »

palmotea wrote: post #31
866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #27

Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic. Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging. Not that Google has been caught doing anything political before...

> Well there is a very contentious mayoral election going on in LA right now, and the fires are a central topic. > Concealing the fire damage could be used to influence or thwart campaign messaging. I know nothing about that election, but what would be Google's angle in wanting to influence it?

Google has two campuses in LA. They have at least some vested interest in local politics being friendly to them.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#49

Post by verzali »

bradleykingz wrote: post #30
verzali wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can buy it from commercial providers like Planet or even Airbus. They update a few times a day, though depending on the place you are interested in, you may need to put in a request for them to image it. Its actually not that difficult. I used to fly a satellite that could photograph anywhere in the world at least once every few days.

fly a satellite? how?

Mostly by sitting at a computer and typing commands...

Dunno why we say fly, but maybe you prefer operate? Though, funny story, one of my sats had wings and was supposed to demonstrate VLEO flight.

Re: Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?

#50

Post by rurp »

jakeydus wrote: post #46
rurp wrote: post #45

Does anyone know of a good service for getting more up to date satellite images that can be used with other software, such as a tile server, vector map, or similar? I'm looking for some personal projects and have had trouble finding anything in the middle ground between free and enterprise offerings. I don't mind paying a modest amount but something like Planet is beyond my budget, unless they have some personal tier…

ArcGIS Location Platform is a pay-as-you-go solution and their APIs are very generously priced IME.

Thank you, that looks excellent.
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