Juzer Burhani

Google Maps Street View is available outside of the USA for the first time. With the Tour de France due to start on Saturday Google have added Street View imagery to the race route.


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The coverage is limited to the route and in some places to a small area around the race route. However Google will extend it in the next few months, when Street View will be available in many other European countries.

To celebrate Street View's one year birthday, I am very happy to announce we are bringing Street View to 37 (you heard me - 37!) new areas and we have expanded coverage in 15 of our existing areas. All in all, this effectively doubles our coverage. The new cities include:

• MA: Springfield
• NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
• NJ: Newark
• VA: Virginia Beach
• NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
• SC: Columbia, Greenville
• GA: Atlanta
• FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
• AL: Huntsville
• MS: Jackson
• TN: Knoxville
• KY: Lexington, Louisville
• OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
• MI: Ann Arbor
• MO: St. Louis
• KS: Topeka
• NE: Lincoln
• OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
• NV: Reno
• CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton

Now you can stroll under the iconic Reno Arch:


Along with showing you some great metropolitan areas, I'm especially excited that we're also bringing you 10 new parks and recreational areas:

• Everglades National Park (Florida)
  
• Florida Keys
• Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming)
  
• Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming/Montana)
  
• Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)
  
• Joshua Tree National Park (California)
  
• Death Valley National Park (California)
• Lassen Volcanic National Park (California)
  
• Sequoia National Park (California)
• Lake Tahoe (California/Nevada)
  

Now you can see the boiling springs in Yellowstone National Park from a very safe distance:
And last but not least, Street View coverage has expanded in 15 of our current areas: Boise, Boston, Kansas City, Miami, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, Tampa, and Tucson.

We've also been spending the past year working very hard to improve Street View image quality. In this push, we removed some of our oldest images, so say goodbye to odd coloring and funky geometric artifacts. The new images have better color and more consistent lighting.

Let's revisit San Francisco City Hall:
And the skyscrapers of Chicago:


Now you can look up in all our images. But what goes up must come down, so with this release you can also look down as well. The roof of our car and the 'black hole' really aren't all that interesting -- now when you pan down the car is magically gone and you can see straight to the ground in most of our images!

And finally, in the spirit of getting better with age, the face blurring technology we began testing in Manhattan has been deployed for all of our imagery. Remember that all these new Street View images are simultaneously available in Google Earth and through Google Maps API.

In celebration of Street View's first year of public availability, Google has made a major update to the Street View imagery. Unfortunately, none of the imagery is outside the US yet (despite the many sightings of Street View cars taking imagery in Europe). But, this update not only includes the many new cities in over a dozen states, but also updated and expanded coverage in many of the cities which already had Street View imagery. In particular, Google says more of the imagery now has more spherical panoramas (so you can look up and down in addition to 360 degree panoramas). And, they've worked on improving resolution and picture quality. Also, all the imagery has been processed with their new face-blurring technology to address some privacy concerns. Not only that, but the entire update is also available in the Google Earth Street View layer. Just to whet your appetite, here's one of the new cities:

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Read the full details on the new and expanded coverage over at Google's LatLong Blog. And, to see interesting sights found in Street View, or to share interesting things you find in the new imagery, try out Google Earth Hack's new Street View sightings database.

P.S. My apologies for the small number of posts the last few days. Had a bit of family crisis when my nephew Jason was involved in a traffic accident. Thankfully, he is miraculously all right now, and should completely mend in a few weeks. The other good news is that I got to do some flying in a Cessna between several states during the last few days.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo (English translation) reports that Google's Street View cars have been spotted in many Spanish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona. Apparently, the local police wasn't very impressed and Google was fined for parking in a restricted area.


There's even a custom Google Map that includes many locations where Google's cars were spotted in Spain and Google Blogoscoped points to a video that shows a Street View car on the streets of Seville.

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Google will add Street View imagery for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other European countries in the coming months.
via Google Operating System

Related Posts:
Google Street View Cars on Video
Rivalry has begun for Google Maps Street View

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According to the descriptions on YouTube, the first video is a Google Street View car in Seville, Spain, and the second is one around Palm Springs, California, US. These cars from the Google fleet have a camera mounted on top to photograph the panorama views that are later added to Google Maps. It’s like the first Googlebots spotted in the wild, and perhaps signs of a future to come in which devices of different shapes and functionality roam the streets to collect information (compare with this fiction).

Rendering all that information back to us in the many of Google’s services may hold much fascinating use; at the same time, considering that Google’s technology may advance and they say they may hand over their collected data of public or private nature to governments if required by law (and they also say they may not always disclose when that happens)*, this is a future that may also get some worried... if ever a government turns against its citizens.

In other related news, according to German Focus, Google also wants to bring Street View cars to Germany, as they are doing for other European countries. Both faces and car license plates would be blurred, Google’s Peter Fleischer argued.

*Google’s privacy policy says that Google may share “personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Google” when they have “good faith belief” that it satisfies “any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request”. Furthermore, a clause in the US Patriot Act, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, contains a bit prohibiting anyone who receives a National Security Letter from “disclos[ing] to any person that the [FBI] has sought or obtained access to information or records.” Google in a PDF FAQ (which I can’t access anymore at the moment) on the question “How many subpoenas for server log data does Google receive each year?” answered, “As a matter of policy, we don’t provide specifics on law enforcement requests to Google.”

Whilst Google are forced to consider how they can comply with different privacy laws around the world before they expand Street View coverage outside the USA, two more companies have emerged that are providing 'Street View' type coverage for countries Google presently cannot reach.

EveryScape

EveryScape provides 'street view' type coverage for a number of US destinations but also currently has panoramic imagery available for Beijing, China and Krackow, Poland.

Everyscape presents their panoramic images alongside a Google Map. Like Google Maps' Street View it is possible to walk around by clicking on arrows on the image or navigate to different views via the map.

EveryScape contains two big improvements on Google Maps' Street View. The first is the amazing morphing between the different panoramic images. The second is that they have tagged their panoramas with Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and YouTube videos. Users can even tag the views with their own 'memo's'. Once you have tagged a panoramic image you are given your own url, so you can then share your annotations with your friends.

EveryScape has big plans and are looking for 'ambassadors' throughout the world to start creating new panoramas. I expect their coverage will be spreading to other countries very soon.

City8

City8 is a Chinese company providing 'Street View' type panoramas for a number of Chinese locations. Like EveryScape they present 360 degree panoramic images next to a map. It is possible to move around and between different images by clicking on arrows with the images or to navigate to different views using the map.

There is a full screen button, which unlike Google's Street View, actually takes over your monitor's full screen. Links to interesting places are given below the panoramic image so it is possible to quickly navigate to local points of interest.