A Street View frame shows a boxy white house in Porto, Portugal, with a terracotta roof, modest green lawn and long gray driveway stretching down its side. A figure can be seen at the driveway’s end, left knee on the cement and hands busy behind a small wheelbarrow, slightly blurred as if painted in watercolor.

For many, it would be an unremarkable image, but for Google software engineer André Santos it’s a treasure — one that might have stayed buried if not for a mix of fate, technology and curiosity.

In early 2023, André’s parents installed solar panels, and when the government announced €30 million worth of grants for people who had taken steps to make their homes more energy efficient, he decided to apply on their behalf. He just needed photographic proof the work took place after May 2022. “Getting the after photo would be easy enough,” André says. “But we didn’t have any past photos that clearly showed the outside of the house before.”

Recalling his time exploring neighborhoods he was considering moving into on Google Maps, an idea struck. “I remembered you could click on snapshots of past Street View images of an area,” André says. He took his laptop to his parents’ house and typed their address into Maps. The most recent image, from April 2023, already captured the solar panels on the roof, so he selected “see more dates” and found a picture taken in July 2022. Voila: no panels.

His parents, impressed by the feature, asked to see a before-and-after of a recent house renovation. André went further, clicking on the oldest available Street View image of the address from September 2009. As it loaded, his parents stopped talking; André, too, fell quiet. The trio’s eyes were drawn to that hazy figure at the back of the driveway. “It was my grandfather, Joaquim,” André says. “He’d passed away a year before.” André’s mom, who was especially close to her father-in-law, softly broke the silence: “I miss him.”