Google Street View helps people revisit their deceased relatives; Find out how

Social media users recently have been sharing Google Street View images featuring friends and relatives who have since died. Launched in the US in 2017, Google Street View is now a part of almost every country in the world. The new trend was sparked by a Twitter post, which said that they had searched the map platform for images taken before their father had died. 

Google Street View pics

Following the post, several users shared photos from Google Street View. One Twitterati showed an image of a couple holding hands in the street and wrote that his parents, who died several years ago, were captured walking down the road. Another user captured a lady just outside her doorway. 

Several others also said that seeing local images taken when their loved ones were still alive made them feel a connection. Some expressed regret images poignant to them had been replaced with more recent photos. Searching through Google Street view for strange objects or bizarre moments captured in freezeframe has become something of a niche internet pastime. To look back at previous incarnations, one can tap the clock icon on the top left-hand side of Google Maps. 

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time people have tried reuniting with family with the help of Google Street View. back in 2015, Matthew J. X. Malady, in a piece in the New Yorker called, ‘The Ghosts in Our Machines,’ wrote what it felt like finding his mother in an old street view photo, Malady said that the "confluence of emotions," when he registered what he was looking at, was unlike anything he had ever experienced - something akin to the simultaneous rush of a million overlapping feelings. He added that there was joy to find his mother, however, he added that there was also "deep, deep sadness". "There was heartbreak and hurt, curiosity and wonder, and everything, seemingly, in between," Malady said. 

(Image: Twitter/Apple)