Accused by a Democrat in the U.S. Congress of "airbrushing history," Google said it has now replaced pre-Hurricane Katrina satellite images of the Gulf Coast region with more recent aerial photographs.

The search giant came under fire late last week after the Associated Press reported the company had traded imagery documenting the August 2005 storm's devastating effects in its mapping services for higher-resolution images depicting pre-hurricane calm.

Google on Sunday said it had no intention of "rewriting history" but nonetheless was able to "expedite" the processing of 2006 aerial photography data for New Orleans that is of equally high quality. That update went up on Sunday evening, the company said.