This is amazing! Is there already a platform that records past imagery for places in the world for users to see what changed over time?

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/usgs-eros-archive-... has all of the unclassified US government satellites.

Planet, Maxar, and others, though costs are fairly high even for hobbyists.

https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com and it's free!

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on this.

Man that's crazy, wonder if any stock traders use this data to make predictions or futures

Yes, obviously, but more commodities than stocks.

> commodities

"Fear and greed index" ha didn't know about that

Google Earth Pro has a "historical image" slider to go back to previous versions of an area

And Google Earth Pro is free. The name may suggest that it isn't.

You can use copernicus satellites for free which ive found generally have at least 5 or so pictures each month but the resolution isnt that high (>10M i think)

Check the European Sentinel-2 datasets.

I used to work at a company that used Sentinel-2 data and a large scale AI model to detect changes in land use and land cover anywhere in the world. They provide free global data at 10m resolution on an annual basis, or paid versions at 3m resolution over a custom timeframe.

https://www.impactobservatory.com/