Google Street View Now Covers 90% of the UK

Last week, Google announced that they had successfully uploaded their Street View pictures for approximately 90% of the UK, encompassing just short of a quarter of a million miles of British roads.

Google Street View is a new technology that is featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic views along a street.

Google’s Street View service has actually been available since March 2009, with a total of 25 cities being featured. However the increased coverage launched last Thursday makes an additional 210,000 miles of detailed mapping available to the general public over the internet.

In this article I will be discussing explain how exactly Google achieved this extraordinary task, the widely publicised privacy concerns and the benefits of Street View.

How were the photographs captured?

The astonishing Street View images are captured by various ‘Google’s cars’ which are fitted with a special panoramic camera on its roof.

Any pedestrianised locations or interest in the UK have also been photographed using ‘Google’s tricycle’. For example you can look at photos of Stonehenge and the banks of Loch Ness online without even visiting the place.

Once the images are captured by the Google cars and tricycles, they are “sewn” together to create the images we now see on Street Maps.

How do I use it?

Here are a couple of short videos from Google on how to get started with Street View using your PC or Mobile.

What are the benefits of Street View?

• There are endless benefits of using Google Street View from business to leisure, some of which are summarised below;
• Explore famous landmarks around the world from the comfort of your own home. For example you can view sights such as Big Ben, Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.
• Use your mobile device to look up directions and navigate using street view images for every step you take to your destination.
• Check the parking facilities or disabled access before visiting a new city
• Show family and friends where you live or perhaps any home improvements such as extensions to far away relatives.
• Preview your holiday accommodation. This will help you see if there are any negative points to the local area, particularly when brochures only tend to tell you about the good stuff. You could even take a virtual stroll from your hotel to the beach to see what the neighbourhood is like.
• Event locations could be advertised such as festivals, charity runs and open air markets.
• UK businesses are able to embed Google maps and Street View into their own sites for free. For example a hotel owner could promote its establishment within the local area by offering potential visitors a virtual stroll through the nearby streets.
• You could use Street View to promote your business by showing them an external view of your premises and nearby amenities. It could also be used to help visitors find your business by guiding them using local landmarks and tube stations.
• Estate agents are able to show prospective buyers or tenants available properties. Also Street View images can be easily embedded into their sites with the Maps API.
• Schools can incorporate the new features on Google Maps as part of their geography and history lessons to go on ‘virtual field trips’.
• Journalists could embed the location of a news story onto their site to show the location of a news event, for example a protest in central London.
• Likewise, a journalist could be writing an article about a new building built by a famous architect. Thanks to Street View, they would not need to go to the location to take a photo for their article.

Why all the fuss about privacy concerns?

As Google states on its website ‘Street View’ contains imagery that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street. However, since the launch last week, critics have said that it is an invasion of privacy and that the technology could easily be used by criminals in planning burglaries and thefts of cars and properties.

Google has, and continues to take steps to preserve people and their properties anonymity. It’s specialist technology automatically blurs number plates and people’s faces, and users can also ask for their homes or cars to be removed by clicking on the ‘report a problem’ button on the image concerned.

Whilst I understand people’s concerns, I personally think that the benefits of Street View far outweigh the privacy issues raised by some critics. Google are not capturing images of anything that cannot be viewed by the general public. All streets in the UK are after all in public domain, meaning anyone can walk down your street and take photos of your house if they so wish to. The only difference is that now this information is available at a click of a button from your PC or mobile device.

What can we expect next for Google Street View?

I am sure there will be hundreds more possibilities for this new technology over the next year, and I also expect Google will continue to launch new technologies to help make our lives that little bit easier.

Interestingly, this morning I read that Google are apparently now working on something called ‘Store View’.

Yep, you guessed it, Google are reportedly running a trial whereby photographs are taken of the inside of a shop every 6 feet and in all directions, alongside snapshots of products. The plan is to allow people to venture from Street View into Store View by clicking on a virtual door. They will then be able to enter the store, walk through it and browse products before making a purchase.

When a journalist asked Google about the rumours they simply replied ‘“We are always experimenting with new features for Google Maps. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”