Only Clear Skies On Google Maps and Earth

Google Maps and Earth with only clear skies? That's kinda creepy and cool all at the same time.

To celebrate the sunny days of summer (in the northern hemisphere at least), today we're launching new satellite imagery for Google’s mapping products. This stunning global view is virtually cloud-free and includes refreshed imagery in more locations—giving you an even more accurate and comprehensive view of our planet's landscape.

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Translation: The NSA forced us to take these photos of the Earth with as few clouds as possible for spying. We're letting other people use it too.

i dont think anyone uses google earth to look at a clouds.

but also, isnt this also a summer-always view too?

0% cloud cover doesn't necessarily dictate it'll be recent imagery.

Good for what I used to do, nonetheless.

Well we have always done cloud/snow analysis for all Landsat products, but it wasn't something that people wanted until recently, (and I don't know why). I know for a long time the cloud/snow band was broken or not working correctly and now with Landsat 8 we no longer have the cloud/snow issue's from the last few years.

How can anyone find the lack of clouds on Google map creepy?

Having a portion of Google map that interests you, say your hometown, obscured by clouds would make the thing as useful as having a paper city map that had big blank patches on it.

It is bad enough with all the conspiracy theorists getting in tizzies over digital glitches and shapes they don't recognize. Imagine if some place they were interested in was obscured by a cloud.