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Google streetview world coverage

gmaps-samples.googlecode.com

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I run a couple of Street View based sites. Here are a few interesting and lesser known places which they've covered:

Wieliczka Salt Mine: http://www.instantstreetview.com/2n9vv9z3sayesz1uyzp0z2u

Battleship Island: http://www.instantstreetview.com/2bp3k8z5ve6kiz4bvzs4z2u

Lava cave in Japan: http://www.instantstreetview.com/2dcp2cz5x7dgmz15jzohz2u

Once upon a time maps cost a lot of money and were a government thing - you had to licence the data.

What Google have done by driving everywhere is to create their own maps. They don't need to license data from anyone, they own their own maps and the underlying data is in a format they can make sense of unlike the many other formats that went with old-style GIS.

They have also been running that CAPTCHA to get people to decipher street and other signs for their maps.

In previous times maps were closely guarded secrets - because knowledge is power. Although Google have made quality (well, amazing) maps available to anyone with a computer, they have also taken ownership of maps and mapping. There have been no complaints of unfair practices from rival mapping concerns, they have not 'done a Microsoft' on their rivals. They simply offer a better product.

Whomever it was at Google that had the vision to do maps - and create their own map data - was very clever. Mapping the whole world their way - with Street View - may seem insane, but, there is a lot of power in owning the copyright to the world's maps. By analogy, with music the money is in song writing rather than performing.

> Once upon a time maps cost a lot of money and were a government thing - you had to licence the data.

In some countries yes, but in the U.S. the government-created map data is licensed under much friendlier terms than Google's is. You can download huge piles of map data here, as bulk export with no strings attached: http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html

Although the best map data in the western world comes from neither a government nor Google: http://www.openstreetmap.org

> Whomever it was at Google that had the vision to do maps - and create their own map data - was very clever.

That would be Brian McClendon. He co-founded Keyhole, now known as Google Maps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_McClendon

No contest about Brian's role, but Keyhole is Google Earth. Maps is based on another acquisition, Where 2 Technologies.

Please tell me I'm not the only one that goes on "Google Maps Vacations". I've been doing this for years, I pick a place and head into street view and start exploring for hours at a time. Literally sometimes 5-7 hours non stop. I seem to favor little towns above big cities. I feel like I'm discovering something secret that few people know about.

Italy, Spain, Greece, Scandinavia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Mexico. I love it all.

My bucket list dream is that one day Google turns their 2D maps into explorable 3D worlds. If I'm around by then, and I'm retired, that is where I will be aaaaaaaaall day.

Me too since I found Oculus Street View for my Rift.

  http://oculusstreetview.eu.pn

It's a pretty amazing experience. This map will be very, very useful.

I do the same thing. I've spent countless hours just randomly exploring.

Surprised Germany is so resistant, although I suppose there was that WiFi SSID collection scandal which caused tension.

Google received 200k+ formal objections from house-owners to remove/pixelate their properties for privacy concerns. This caused a huge delay and as far as i know they're not planning to add any new cities anytime soon.

As a German, I guess 90% of us would love to have a complete Street View coverage...

But maybe other Germans would guess a different percentage?

Not necessarily. With the German privacy protection laws, it sounds like just 1% of the population could easily cause enough grief to make mapping prohibitively expensive. According to this

http://searchengineland.com/google-has-stopped-street-view-p...

250k homes and businesses requested to have their property blurred out, which is indeed much less than 1% of the population.

A tiny fraction of those who would oppose having their property shown on street view would be aware of it and take the time to do anything about it. So 250k people is quite a lot, and probably means a much larger percent of the population are bothered by it.

Nah, there was a huge media campaign against Street View. It was used by polititian to gain some "we care for you" profile and was mainly driven by the media companies that have a strong anti google stance in germany mainly because they want a part of Google's profits.

It would be interesting to know how many of those 250k feel that Street View is a useful service, but just don't want their own home/business on it.

http://searchengineland.com/google-has-stopped-street-view-p... (2011)

That, and people can ask Google to take out any depictions of their property if they so desire. That is part of an agreement between Google and a Hamburg official responsible for privacy issues.

Recently our whole office spent quite a bit of time enthralled with the amateur photospheres on google views. Some are really good at capturing lesser known slices of life in a very effective manner (in japan we particularly liked Masato Ota https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/113583807829738829819... )

Very important when your playing GeoGuessr!

http://geoguessr.com/

Or perhaps maptag? http://playmaptag.appspot.com/

Disclaimer: created by a friend.

Henderson Island: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Pitcairn+Islands&hl=en&ll=-24...

https://maps.google.com/?ll=28.188244,-126.650391&spn=34.626... - Midway Island

Pretty much as far north as you can drive in Europe: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=B%C3%B8rnesveien+17,+9763+Ska...

I love Street View!

In case anyone is curious, Henderson Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henderson_Island_(Pitcairn_Isla...) is perhaps best known as the remote island where some of the survivors of the whaleship Essex arrived after their boat was rammed by a sperm whale. The story of the Essex is the inspiration for Melville's Moby-Dick.

What is it about Thailand that causes it to be so thoroughly mapped compared to every other country in the region?

The surrounding countries are significantly poorer?

Thailand: GDP: $701.554b, Per Capita: $10,849

Myanmar: GDP: $111.120b, Per Capita: $1,711

Cambodia: GDP: $36.540b, Per Capita: $2,395

Laos: GDP: $19.158b, Per Capita: $3,004

Vietnam: GDP: $358.889b, Per Capita: $4,001

What's more interesting is the poor coverage of South Korea (which BTW, has pretty good street view equivalent coverage from domestic google map alternatives)

http://map.daum.net/ (hit the little web cam looking icon in the upper right to see where you can street view

It's substantially wealthier (using per capita GDP). I wouldn't be surprised if it just has more and better roads (making it easier and, sort of, more interesting to map).

It may be my cynicism, but isn't a wealthy country more likely to have screen on which adverts can be viewed? Does the mapping relate more to this?

I don't think it is cynicism to expect a business to choose better markets. I do think the whole Streetview thing is forward looking enough that the immediate economics are not the only thing they consider.

Thailand is a very US friendly state - commercially, militarily, and diplomatically. Oh, and functional air conditioning, international cuisine, relaxed visa rules, cheap flights and armies of hookers probably help when attracting international business to the region, too. Seriously.

It's because there is a lot of vacation tourism to Thailand (much more than other countries in that region), specially from Europe. People use streetview to, for example, check the street a hotel is on before booking etc.

I can't be certain, but I'm guessing it has to do with its tech influence. In fact, if you look closely, every heavily mapped region has a prevalence of technology or are homes to tech centers.

This is a pretty interesting (albeit lengthy) read for anyone who missed it - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/googles-plan-for-...

I just wish there were a better interface for actually exploring more than a single frame at a time of Street View. Like http://www.gaiagi.com/driving-simulator/ but more so.

If you go into Street View in Google Earth (I just zoom in until it kicks me into street view, don't know if there's a better way to enter it) you get full WASD control and it displays it on (pretty crude) geometry so the transition from frame to frame is continuous (and you can even deviate from the path in the street, though it gets more distorted the more you deviate from the actual car path).

Captivating. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-...

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-...

These guys are crowd-sourcing street views in a way that could someday complement OpenStreetMap: http://mapillary.com/

Looks nice, but it only complements OSM if the pictures and db are released to all under an open licence. I can't find one on the Mapillary site (though I may have missed it).

Only if you have an iPhone.

I'm able to view the pictures just fine using a desktop web browser.

I guess you mean the pictures are taken by iPhones.

Yes. The point of being like OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps is the way the maps are not read-only, but that anyone can contribute. And for Mapillary, this is not true unless you have an iPhone.

Still no Street View for (Hawai'i, island, county, & state) my area, but I see that some of the unpaved secondary (private subdivision) roads are now covered by Street View.

We saw one of the Google cars on Highway 19, in Kurtistown, about 5 years ago. We held our beers out the window of the truck and waved at them but I never saw us on Street View...

We probably got edited out, which is, I guess, a good thing since it's against the law to have open containers of alcoholic beverages on the roadway here.

Out of curiosity, why is none of northern Africa mapped? I'm even more surprised none of Turkey is mapped... they even have positions there [1], so I'm guessing it's not an opposition to Google by the government.

[1] http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/istanbul/

Especially in Istanbul, I guess it would be hard because

1) Roads change all the time, tunnels are built, huge sections of the city gets randomly closed to traffic permanently and so...

2) Istanbul doesn't have a proper road/street system but something which rather seems to be some paths randomly crossing and a lot of houses built in the smallest possible remaining land. It's also generally not clear which roads are public and private.

Turkey is mapped by http://harita.yandex.com.tr by the way.

And many parts of Asia by their own internet companies.

Lacking coverage might be because of local laws – see Germany and Greece for example.

I wish they do street view for India. If I recall correctly, they started it in Bangalore but had to shutdown because of local law.

According to the map here, they do have some Indian cities in blue.

All are private buildings and properties. Like IITs, Amusement Parks etc.

Anyone know why argentina, paraguay, and bolivia have no coverage? Have the governments blocked it? super rural/remote stretches of brazilian highway in the amazon are covered. I mean I doubt there is much demand, but argentina should have higher demand (40 million people)

I wonder if Google is going to get around to doing Canal view and river view? (I know they've done some, but it'd be good to have everything).

  National Museum of Iraq
  Baghdad, Iraq

Central Europe, except Austria, Slovenia (and most of Germany) - I love it

Seems like most of the Holy Roman Empire doesn't want to be streetviewed.

i saw the google cars in Buenos Aires argentina some months ago.

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