I suspect that there's likely to be a relatively straightforward explanation of why, in some instances, satellite imagery on Google Earth may differ from that which is available from Google Maps on QGIS, but this oddity has puzzled me for quite sometime.
I'm involved in researching the built environment and would like a clear grasp of any limitations. I'll illustrate this point in two screen-dump images of the same building. The first one, immediately below, was taken from Google Earth software, and the other, beneath this, from QGIS using the Openlayers Plugin
In this particular case the satellite imagery that I sourced from Google Earth seems to be a lot more recent as it shows a building that has been extended and is now considerably larger from what is shown via the OpenLayers Plugin. I'm guessing but perhaps this issue is due to how Google updates its maps. Can I use something other than the OpenLayers Plugin in QGIS, which may potentially be able to access more recent Google satellite imagery?