[bastawhiz]

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.

[paganel]

> 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/Altadena,+CA,+USA/@34.19...

[bastawhiz]

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.

[trashb]

As I understand it Google earth and Google maps are two separate products. And Google earth is the more premium product (more data and features accessable), therefore perhaps the licenses are separately negotiated?