This particular stretch of El Camino used to have 3 or 4 car dealerships right next to each other. They've all closed down in the past several years.
If you look at this "Bird's eye" view from MS Live Maps and rotate the camera angle, you can see what the place looked like while still in business and after it shut down depending on when the image was taken.
Still in business
Out of business
It would be nice if MSFT and Google would time stamp their map images.