Since Street View first launched in Google Maps, it’s grown from five U.S. cities to locations on all seven continents, and we’ve been able to visit some beautiful and historic places around the world. To share some of our favorite imagery with you, and also give you a behind-the-scenes look at Street View technology, we’ve updated our Street View site.
In addition to the places on the site homepage, we’ve included highlights from around the world in a gallery that lets you see ski slopes, UNESCO World Heritage sites, and breathtaking places on all seven continents.
While we’ve been able to photograph most places in Street View with our cars, plenty of unique and interesting locations around the world aren’t accessible by car. To help us visit places with smaller paths or unpaved terrain, we’ve developed the Trike, Snowmobile and Trolley, which have enabled us to share parks, ski trails, and even museums with you in Street View. You can now check out pictures and 3D models, and learn more about all of these platforms on the site.
Once we collect new imagery, we “stitch” the individual photographs into the 360-degree imagery you see in Google Maps. The revamped site provides an in-depth look at this process and shows the progression of photos into the immersive Street View experience.
You can also learn about how to use Street View, meet our friendly mascot Pegman, read about our cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology, or see where Street View is available across the world.
We’re starting with this update for our United States site, and will continue rolling it out for more countries in the coming months. Start exploring new places at maps.google.com/streetview.