Google mainly uses the NASA Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 satellites, as well as the ESA's Copernicus / Sentinel satellites. However, Google also uses other sources, especially aerial imagery over denser population centers. They also use image processing techniques that combine many different image sources into a single result image that you see. If you turn on satellite imagery mode you will see a copyright line at the bottom of the map display, and that copyright line lists the image copyright holders that own the images used to create your current view. If the copyright holder says NASA that means the Landsat 7/8 satellites. If it says Copernicus or ESA that means the Sentinel satellites. When I zoom into my city the copyright holder changes to Maxar Technologies (a geospatial data company), the US Geological Survey, and the USDA Farm Service Agency- Google uses aerial imagery stitched together from those three agencies in order to create one map that's as high a resolution as possible. The Google Earth desktop program (which is free) allows you to see all (unedited) imagery of a certain location from different providers by using the history tab. In this setting there is a timeline that shows when each set of images was produced, and you can select just the set of images you want to see. In my area the USGS and USDA has very low-resolution aerial photography that goes back to the (I think) 80's and 90's, with higher resolution satellite and eventually high resolution aerial photography being available in the 2000's and 2010's. More on reddit.com

Just wish the interactions were better designed More on reddit.com

Hoping for a glimpse of cleavage. More on reddit.com

"Flying" over the Amazon forests is one of the most enjoyable thing in Google Earth. I absolutely love it. Turning out the historical imagery and doing a then/now is utterly heart wrenchingly sad. More on reddit.com