Google has launched a new feature that allows users of its Google Maps website to travel back in time.
From Thursday, historical street view images will be available in 52 countries allowing people to go on virtual tours of what their towns and cities looked like a few years ago.
Google chose Christchurch to unveil the new feature because of the importance of this sort of technology to a city that's lost almost all of its central business district.
Christchurch's Crowne Plaza Hotel site in 2008, 2012 and 2014. Photo: Google Maps
Google engineer Anthony Baxter said it lets people look at the places they grew up in and see how much they have have changed over the years.
He said that would be even more striking for people in Christchurch, where so much change has already occurred and will continue as the rebuild gets under way.
