Google Street View

File:Google Street View.png

Google Street View

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth that provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched on May 25, 2007, only five cities were included. It has since expanded to more than 40 U.S. cities, and includes the suburbs of many, and in some cases, other nearby cities.

Google Street View displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile, and can be navigated using either the arrow keys on the keyboard or by using the mouse to click on arrows displayed on the screen. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles. Lines that are displayed along the street that is shown indicate the direction followed by that street.

Evolution

The "Google Car", used for Street View mapping, seen here in Cupertino, California. The roof turret with array of eight wide-angle cameras can be seen.

Google Street View currently features 43 camera icon markers on the United States map, each representing at least one major U.S. city or area, and often the suburbs and other nearby cities. In all, with the extensions now reaching quite far beyond these major cities, views can now be seen in parts of 33 states.

• The first cities to be introduced on May 25, 2007 were Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, and San Francisco.
• On August 7, 2007, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, and Orlando were added.
• On October 9, 2007, six more cities, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Tucson, and Chicago were included.
• On December 10, 2007, six more cities were introduced: Boston, Providence, Detroit, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and Dallas.
• On February 12, 2008, nine more cities were introduced: Albany, Salt Lake City, Boise, Juneau, Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas), Milwaukee, San Antonio, Raleigh, and Manchester.
• On March 27, 2008, twelve more cities were introduced: Albuquerque, Anchorage, Austin, Cleveland, Fairbanks, Little Rock, Madison, Nashville, Richmond, Rockford, Spokane, and Tampa. Yosemite National Park in California was also introduced with an icon of its own.

On April 16, 2008 street view was fully integrated into Google's Google Earth product in version 4.3.

Google initially used images from spherical video company Immersive Media as well as their own vehicles. Since December 2007, Google has used imagery that belongs exclusively to Google.

Areas included

Main article: List of Google Street View locations

Most of the early locations have a more limited number of views, and usually included only major streets within the city limits, though they have since been expanded. For example, in New York, while views can be seen in parts of all five of the city's boroughs, there originally were no views provided of any New York suburbs. Now, some views of bridges and tunnels going into New York, (like the Lincoln Tunnel and Tappan Zee Bridge and parts of the freeways leading up to these), a large portion of Westchester County and major roads on Long Island, and some places in New Jersey, including parts of US-1 and US-22, Newark International Airport, and some streets in Westfield are included. In May 2008, All streets in Manhattan were added, with views to the sky being possible (see complete map).

The collections of the photos taken of cities added later, though, are more extensive from the beginning, and often include a more detailed area, including every side street within the city, more suburbs, and in some cases, other smaller cities that are within a close drive of the large city or sometimes an hour or more away.

• Indianapolis's Street View map extends to other cities in Indiana, including Terre Haute, Anderson, Bloomington, Muncie, Marion, Lafayette, Columbus and Greensburg, as well as to Danville, Illinois (see complete map).

• The Orlando view also includes photo collections extending out to Melbourne and Daytona Beach along with the main roads connecting them (see complete map).

• In the Miami view, currently one of the places with less details, cities such as Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale have been included in some parts (see complete map).

• The Tampa icon links to a large portion of the Tampa Bay Area, including St. Petersburg and some nearby suburbs (see complete map).

• In the Boston, Providence, and Manchester areas, other cities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, such as Worcester, Quincy, Brookfield, Lowell and Pawtucket, and a special view of Gillette Stadium where the New England Patriots play, as well as certain points New Hampshire are included. Some towns in this collection include detailed views of all streets, including side streets. Though continually linked streets and roads containing views exist between all these areas, a separate icon is provided for each of these three main cities (see complete map).

• When the Chicago area views were first released, very few suburban areas were included. But on February 12, 2008, when Milwaukee was added, all areas between these two cities were included, greatly increasing the number of Chicago suburbs that could be found, as well as the number of streets in the Chicago area. On March 27, 2008, when Madison and Rockford were added, this brought four areas together, extending all the way out to Dubuque, Iowa. Though Chicago, Rockford, Milwaukee, and Madison each have a separate icon, all included areas are continually connected (see complete map of all 4 areas).

• The Los Angeles area started with views covering very few streets and very few areas from nearby cities. But currently, many other large cities near Los Angeles are covered in detail, including Ontario, San Bernardino, Riverside, much of Orange County and San Fernando (see complete map).

• The Denver area has also been improved since its day of inception. Originally including only Denver and its immediate suburbs, the areas covered now include all points as far north as Fort Collins and Wellington, and points as far south as Castle Rock (see complete map).

• In Dallas-Ft. Worth, almost every street was visible in the Street View mode from the beginning (see complete map of Dallas-Ft. Worth area).

• The Detroit area began with views covering very few streets inside the Detroit city limits, detailed views in the suburbs in much of Wayne County and southern Oakland County, and very few freeways. On February 12, 2008, it expanded to include more Detroit streets, more streets in Macomb County and more freeways. It however, extends to cities to the north, west, and south such as Royal Oak, Taylor and Wyandotte.

• The Philadelphia area includes other parts of Southeastern Pennsylvania, a large area around Philadelphia International Airport, the Wilmington, Delaware area and other parts of New Castle County, and a little bit of Elkton, Maryland. In many of the suburban areas in Pennsylvania, complete communities with every cul-de-sac are included (see complete map).

• The Portland, Oregon views includes Vancouver, Washington(see complete map).

• The Houston area also includes Galveston (see complete map).

• The Pittsburgh area also includes towns as far as 60 miles North, East, and South of the city, such as New Castle and Uniontown (see complete map)

• The Salt Lake City icon includes most of Utah's largest cities, including Provo, Ogden, Sandy, etc. (see complete map).

• The Kansas City area also features the cities of Lawrence and Baldwin City in Kansas, both to the west of Kansas City. Also included is the area of Valley Falls, Kansas (to the northwest of Kansas City), though the roads shown are not connected in a continuous series of photos to the streets included in the Kansas City views (see complete map).

• Also part of the Raleigh map are the cities of Durham and Chapel Hill, as well as many other nearby towns (see complete map).

• Much of eastern Upstate New York is featured near the Albany icon (see complete map).

• The Albuquerque icon also features Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though no icon exists for Santa Fe itself, this adds to the growing list of state capitals included. Currently, 17 state capitals can be seen in Street View mode (see complete map).

• The Richmond area covers almost all of the city as well as most areas of Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover counties, as well as portions of Goochland, King William, and New Kent counties and the cities of Colonial Heights and Hopewell (see complete map).

• Introductions in 2007 included only major American cities. Many of the 2008 releases include smaller cities and rural areas. The February 12 release included places like Juneau, Alaska, the first place outside the contiguous United States to be included (see complete map). On March 27, the cities of Anchorage (see complete map) and Fairbanks (see complete map) in Alaska were also added, bringing the total number of cities on Alaska to three.

• Boise, Idaho was a part of the February 2008 introductions (see complete map).

• Spokane, Washington was introduced on March 27, 2008; it also included much of Spokane Valley, Washington and portions of Airway Heights, Washington, as well as portions Post Falls, Idaho and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (see complete map).

• Yosemite National Park was the first icon to be added that refers to a park as opposed to an urban area. The only roads included along with this icon are within the park. The icon is labeled as "Yosemite, California" (see complete map).

In addition, many cities now have views taken from nearby Interstates.

While early introductions had views that could only be seen to a certain height, most cities now have images that can be dragged as high as the sky. This has now been updated even in some of the early introductions.

In Google Moon, Street View-style panoramas are available for each Apollo mission.

Future

A "Google Car", used for Street View mapping, spotted in a suburb outside of Tokyo

Google has stated that its ultimate goal is to provide street views of the entire world, although the company has not disclosed in advance the exact dates when any particular locations will be added.

In the more immediate future, Google plans to release Street View for various Canadian cities, but modified so that faces and license plates are blurred, due to concerns raised by Canada's federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart about the program breaching Canada's privacy laws. The commissioner's office expressed particular concern with the fact that spherical video company Immersive Media has already collected images for the service from Calgary, Edmonton, Mississauga, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Regina, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg, especially since those images have already been made commercially available on its web site.

In November 2007, image collection had begun in Australia, with Street View service for the region expected to be made available in the second half of 2008. Images appearing on the Australian Street View will (like Canada) have faces and license plates obscured.

In December 2007, Google began image collection in selected towns and cities in New Zealand, with Street View expected to be made available in Google Maps sometime in 2008.

In March 2008, a Google Street View camera car was also spotted collecting data in Japan.

Google has also been spotted filming in various cities in Italy and Spain, and is attempting to hire 300 drivers to map Switzerland.

Google has demonstrated Street View on prototype phones running Google's Android OS.

In April 2008, Google Street View cars were spotted in Italy with SICK laser scanners added to the scanning array on the car. These would be used for gathering 3D data as well as images.

Similar services

Google Street View is not the only service providing street-level views of cities. Several other companies have been busy producing similar images that can be viewed on websites.

MapJack, which uses a different navigation system, currently provides similar views of various places in California (some of which are also covered by Google) and Thailand.

EveryScape has views of some cities included in Google, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Miami, but has also released views of some areas Google is yet to cover, such as Washington, D.C., various towns in Colorado, and Beijing, China, the first place outside the United States to be featured in such a program, as well as Krakow, Poland, the first place in Europe to ever be featured. EveryScape also provides some views inside public areas of buildings.

Microsoft Live Search Maps offers bird's-eye views of many urban areas of the United States, which give impressions of many buildings nearly at the level of a street-view service. While they have tested true street-side imagery, it is currently only available for two cities on a separate tech preview site.

LOCATION VIEW is a 360 degree movie map covers every corner of Tokyo, Yokohama, Kawasaki, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Himeji in Japan.

Cyclomedia in the Netherlands has 360 degree pictures of almost every location in The Netherlands. A result of a Delft University project, Cyclomedia started commercially in 1994. Its images are integrated into commercial websites eg for real estate Funda and are also in use with government agencies. Cyclomedia offers tools for measuring, 3D, Virtual Reality and projection. On the Funda [1] real-estate website users can see 360 degree panorama's of the neighbourhood (buurt) the house is located in. [2]

Privacy issues

Privacy advocates have objected to this Google feature, pointing to views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, cottagers at public parks, parents hitting their children, males picking up prostitutes and other activities, as well as people engaging in activities visible from public property in which they do not wish to be seen publicly. Google maintains that the photos were taken from public property. Before launching the service, Google removed photos of domestic violence shelters, and allows users to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove. When the service was first launched, the process for requesting that an image be removed was not trivial; however, Google has since changed its policy to make removal more straightforward. Images of potential break-ins, sunbathers and individuals entering adult bookstores have, for example, remained active and these images have been widely republished.

In Europe, the creation of Google Street View may not be legal in all places. While the laws vary from country to country, many countries in Europe have laws prohibiting the unconsented filming of an individual on public property for the purpose of public display.

Google has delayed the release of its street views of Washington, D.C. and other nearby areas of Virginia and Maryland (including Baltimore, Central Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Virginia Beach) and in parts of New Jersey out of concern from the United States Department of Homeland Security that some of the images taken may be of security-sensitive areas.

The Pentagon has banned Google from publishing Street View content of U.S. military bases and asked Google to remove existing content of bases (to which Google has complied).

Some parents have expressed concern over Street View compromising the security of their children.

Aaron and Christine Boring, a Pittsburgh couple sued Google for "invasion of privacy". They claimed that Street View made a photo of their home available online, and it diminished the value of their house, which was purchased for its privacy.

Some bloggers have disputed these privacy concerns. For example, a photograph of the home of the Boring couple was already available on the county tax assessor's website prior to their lawsuit.

Pop Culture

infoMania parodied street view and other features of Google Maps in their segment Guilty Pleasures: Maps

See also

• Google Maps
• Google Earth

External links

• Google Street View
  • Complete Austin area map
  • Cleveland and Detroit areas
  • Complete Las Vegas area map
  • Complete Little Rock area map
  • Complete Nashville area map
  • Complete Phoenix area map
  • Complete Richmond area map
  • Complete San Antonio area map
  • Complete San Diego area map
  • Complete Tucson area map
  • Complete Twin Cities area map
  • Complete Spokane area map
• A argument in defense of Street View as preserving privacy, based on dataset-reality correlation