Google mapquest

I was reading today about how Google Earth is assisting people in finding pools to break into and have parties while their owners are away at work. I wondered, who in my neighborhood has a pool? Luckily my brother recently encouraged me to download Google Earth so I went to work. I found exactly what I thought. My neighbor kitty corner from the back fence has a pool. I didn't need a satellite to tell me of course because all day long I can here through my windows, "MARCO!" "POLO!!!" Yes, my neighbors have a pool. Duh.

And then I got completely distracted and started to look at images of my house available on your computer from Google.

Here's the view of our house from the street. I know EXACTLY when this was taken. I know that there was no landscaping in the front yard for Christmas of 2006 because I was tempted to put down white cotton batting all over the yard to simulate snow but didn't because it seemed wasteful. But I could have because the front yard was DEAD. Then in the Spring, Lyle's parents came for a visit and we broke the ground up in the front yard. Plants went in. Later came gravel. But the gravel isn't in this picture so it's early in the process. Conclusion: Late February 2007.

Here is the view from the sky:
I've outlined our house in pink. There's the convertible in the driveway. The front yard is complete and the fountain is in (that blue circle in the front). The pond is the blue shape in the back (it went in near the beginning of moving in). But the tell-tale clues on this photo are the arbor and the skylight. We built the arbor (in brown) May of 2007. And when the extreme summer heat arrived (around the end of June) we climbed on the roof and put a layer of shade screen over the skylight. In this photo the (yellow square) skylight doesn't have a bunch of crap over it. Conclusion: This photo was taken in early June of 2007.

The funny part of all this is the house to the south of us (the left of the street photo and the bottom of the sky photo) used to be a shack. It really shows in these images. Out front you can see there are no plants and the house is a delightful pink color. From above you can see the backyard was just dirt. The people who lived didn't take care of it and it was the worst house on the block. They have since sold it and it has been fixed up quite nicely. But whoever buys it will one day look up their address, see these awful images and shout, "Hey! That's not where I live!"

Do you think Google has a responsibility to update these images?