I've noticed that many of you have questions regarding the age and
clarity of imagery in Google Earth. The information below should
answer most, if not all, of these questions:

We acquire the best imagery available from our data providers to
display in Google Earth. The areas of high resolution coverage are, on
average, one to three years old.  This imagery is also collected over
time and is not "real time" in nature. This means that the experience
of Google Earth like staring at an interactive photograph, rather than
watching a security camera.

To stay up-to-date on all our latest data additions, feel free to
subscribe to The Sightseer, our monthly newsletter. To subscribe,
please visit
http://earth.google.com/sightseer_signup.html

If your area of interest appears blurry and the Streaming indicator
(at the bottom of your Google Earth viewscreen) has reached 100% to
indicate that all available data has been downloaded, it's likely that
we don't currently provide clearer data for this location.

Check out our Help Center for the answers to other common questions
about Google Earth imagery:
http://earth.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=13327