Google Maps provides high-resolution (full-zoom) satellite images for most urban areas in Canada and the United States (including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) as well as parts of Australia, France, Iceland, Italy, Iraq, Japan, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and many other countries. Google Maps also covers the cities of Moscow, Istanbul, and also Bangalore, Chennai, Salem, Mumbai and New Delhi in India.

All the images shown in Google Maps' satellite mode are at least a year old and in some places up to five years old. Despite this various governments have complained over the potential for terrorists to use the satellite images in planning attacks on nuclear power stations. Google has blurred some areas for security (mostly in the United States), including the U.S. Naval Observatory area (where the official residence of the Vice President is located, and until recently, the United States Capitol and the White House (which formerly featured erased housetop). Other well-known government installations are visible including the infamous Area 51 in the Nevada desert.

With the introduction of an easily pannable and searchable mapping and satellite imagery tool, Google's mapping engine prompted a surge of interest in satellite imagery. Sites such as Google Sightseeing and Google Globetrotting were established which feature satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks, including such novelties as "large type" writing visible in the imagery, as well as famous stadiums and unique earth formations.

As the Google Maps code is almost entirely JavaScript and XML, some end-users reverse-engineered the tool and produced client-side scripts and server-side hooks which allowed a user or website to introduce expanded or customized features into the Google Maps interface.

Using the core engine and the map/satellite images hosted by Google, such tools can introduce custom location icons, location coordinates and metadata, and even custom map image sources into the Google Maps interface. Some of the more well-known of these "Google Maps Hacks" include tools that display locations of Craigslist rental properties , student apartment rentals , and local map Chicago crime data (or check Misdaadkaart.nl showing crimes of one entire country). The script-insertion tool Greasemonkey provides a large number of client-side scripts to customize Google Maps data, and the mygmaps.com website provides an interface for easily adding your own set of locations and viewing them on Google Maps.

Combined with photo sharing websites such as Flickr, a phenomenon called "memory maps" emerged. Using copies of the Keyhole satellite photos of their home towns or other favorite places, the users take advantage of image annotation features to provide personal histories and information regarding particular points of the area.

In honor of the 36th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (July 20, 2005), Google took public domain imagery from NASA of the Moon, and integrated it into the Google Maps interface. By default this tool, with a reduced set of features, also displays the points of landing of all Apollo spacecraft to land on the Moon. This tool also includes an easter egg, displaying a Swiss cheese design at the highest zoom level. Google Moon, as it is called, was linked from a special commemorative version of the Google logo displayed at the top of the main Google search page for the duration of July 20 (UTC).