Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 20 December 2007
Google Street View heads overseas
Google’s sometimes controversial project to provide users of Google maps with panoramic street level photography looks set to expand outside of the US. Estate agents and developers using Google Maps on their websites will benefit from the added functionality as Google expands its ambitious project.
Google uses
a fleet of cars with cameras attached to their roofs to provide street level photography. For an introduction to how the service works,
click here. Google Street View initially launched in the US and covers
these cities.
However, there have been recent sightings of the vans in
Europe and
Australia. Will Google expand to photograph popular overseas buying destinations? It will certainly need a very large fleet of Chevrolet Cobalt cars, but money is not an issue for a company that makes over $1billion profit per quarter.
Google Maps is free to put on your website. Ask your web developers to go
here to take up the service. The one downside to using it is that Google gains access to the data on your site. This has led large portals such as Rightmove and Primelocation.com to choose Microsoft Virtual Earth. The Move Channel are in the process of upgrading their mapping functionality and director Dan Johnson chose Microsoft for this very reason: “I like the service but I don’t want to give Google our data. It would allow them to strip our property content out into another site if they wanted to”.
Dan is not alone is fearing the Big Brother approach taken by Google. The man
caught by their cameras coming out of an adult bookshop may also have something to say on the matter.