Toggle between views using the historical imagery icon.
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We are through the looking glass here people. AI is erasing our existence… 
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Holy Cow!!! I’ve never even known that icon existed !!! Yikes…
Yep, that post (about ‘historical imagery icon’ icon) resolves this question completely…
This just serves to remind me that I’ve never used more than about 5% of GE’s options, in all these years… which makes it much like my beloved long-zoom camera, which also has hundreds of controls that I’ve never touched…
Yeah, I had a bit of a wtf moment as well.
When you first posted I opened GE for a look but didn’t see what you were seeing. That’s why I took the screen shot showing the disappearing wake of the boat.
As it happens I’ve been using a GE but inside a mapping app, can zoom and pan but nothing else. So after reading the thread I wondered what year the image I was using so I opened GE and checked (it’s from 2018).
I also toggled the historical image icon for a look, the woods around here don’t change much. Then I closed GE.
The next morning I opened GE again for another look at the Oakland container terminal and all the ships and containers had disappeared! My first thought was now Google’s doing it to me.
Took a minute to remember what I’d changed.
Google Earth is the only way I’ve used to get satellite imagery but it’s not the only game in town. The same data GE uses can be gotten straight from the USGS. https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ It has a less friendly user interface and I’m not familiar with how to download tiles.
Here’s a screen shot.
Interesting… I’ll take a look at it…