Google Earth 6 has improved quite a bit and most recently has added historical images and 3D trees – a somewhat cartoonish representation of actual trees. The level of detail continues to amaze me and you can see from the photo above of Hollywood, CA that the software allows you to be immersed in your local environment in an amazing way with a tremendous amount of realism.
Google Earth 6 now has historical views
Google Earth 6 now has 3D tree representations
For more check out thoughts from Christopher Dawson.