Why resolution of Goggle Earth images vary place to place?

Answer 1

The imagery used in Google Earth and Google Maps comes from a variety of sources ranging from satellite & aerial imagery to imagery taken from air balloons. Some of the imagery is given to Google by city or state governments. The age of the imagery varies greatly (from several months to 5 years) and the older imagery will have a lower resolution due to technological improvements.

This imagery comes from a variety of vendors each from cameras with different resolutions and quality. Google performs extensive post-processing to stitch and blend the imagery together. It's hard to fathom what a massive project updating the Google imagery really is and the costs involved.

Short answer: there is no one source of imagery covering the globe at all levels (national, region, local, etc.).

Answer 2

Google Earth images come from various sources. Most of them are one to three years old and have different resolution based on the source. Sources include satellite images and aerial Photography. Maps are being constantly updated and higher resolution is being used as it becomes available.

Answer 3

If you see all areas as blurry, even somewhere with high resolution imagery like New York City, and those images are not blurry in Google Maps, read through the Google Earth help center support article to troubleshoot the issue (see link below).

This is often a caching problem and cleaning the disk cache typically clears up this problem.

Answer 4

Basically the Earth is large and continuous coverage of the entire globe takes lots of time and money. Given these constraints Google provides updated imagery around the world often with more frequent updates to major cities first and for special events such as updated satellite imagery to support rescue operations immediately following natural disasters such as in Haiti several days after the area was hit by a large Earthquake.

Googles imagery comes from a variety of sources. Some of the imagery is given to Google by city or state governments.

Keep in mind that sometimes older images are actually of better quality than new images (i.e. there might be a huge cloud over a certain area which encourages using the older, clearer image). For reason reason, newer imagery is sometimes available in 'Historical Imagery', which can be enabled from the View menu in Google Earth.