Back in September 2024, Phil Edwards explored the hidden, unofficial economy Google Street View, where third parties spend money and resources uploading 360-degree imagery to promote a region or tourist attraction or local business or whatever, in this 22½-minute YouTube video.
Tag: Street View
Some Asian Updates to Online Maps
Google has announced that Street View imagery is now available for Nepal.
Meanwhile, Apple observers are reporting that cycling directions are rolling out for Hong Kong and Taiwan in Apple Maps (AppleInsider, MacRumors).
Update, 22 Aug: And Singapore gets the Detailed City Maps treatment in Apple Maps.
Google Maps Has a Lot of User-Contributed Imagery in the Wrong Places
Geography Now was poking around northern Chad in Google Maps and came across a bunch of user-contributed 360-degree images of business interiors that had nothing to do with Chad: they were associated with businesses in Brazil, India, Hungary and so forth. I’m inclined to think these were geocoding glitches or user errors, since the Gulf of Guinea (home of Null Island) seems to have a particularly bountiful crop of them, but I’m spotting shop and schoolroom interiors in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean too.
Did Street View Just Help Solve a Murder Investigation in Spain?
A Street View car passing through the tiny Spanish village of Tajueco captured images of what sure looked like a man loading (or unloading) a wrapped body from the trunk of a car. The images helped authorities solve an outstanding missing person case: remains were discovered earlier this month, and two people have been arrested. News coverage: BBC, El País, New York Times, The Times. Given that it had been 15 years since the last time a Street View car passed through Tajueco, which has maybe 50 inhabitants, doing a shoulder-check for camera-equipped cars was likely not in the forefront of the perpetrators’ minds. (Current screenshot above: the man has since been blurred for obvious reasons.) [Gizmodo, PetaPixel, The Verge]
Some Google Maps Updates
Google Maps imagery updates include improved satellite imagery thanks to an AI model that removes clouds, shadows and haze, plus “one of the biggest updates to Street View yet, with new imagery in almost 80 countries—some of which will have Street View imagery for the very first time.” The web version of Google Earth will be updated with access to more historical imagery and better project and file organization, plus a new abstract basemap layer. [PetaPixel]
Meanwhile, The Verge reports that Google Maps is cracking down on business pages that violate its policy against fake ratings and reviews.
Report: Google to Shut Down Standalone Street View App
According to 9to5Google, Google looks like it’s getting ready to shut down its standalone Street View app (previously). “This standalone app served two distinct groups of people—those who wanted to deeply browse Street View and those who wanted to contribute their own 360° imagery. Considering the more popular Google Maps app has Street View support and Google offers a ‘Street View Studio’ web app for contributors, it should be no surprise to learn that the company is now preparing to shut down the Street View app.” If their report is correct, the shutdown would take place next March. [The Verge]
Google Street View at 15
Google is marking the 15th anniversary of Street View. In a blog post, they preview their next camera, which weighs less than 15 pounds and doesn’t require complex equipment or a specialized car mount. They’re also making their historical Street View imagery (historical in the sense of not current: it only goes back 15 years at most) available via the Google Maps Android and iOS apps. More: 9to5Google, TechCrunch.
Google Street View App Enables User-Uploaded Photos
Google announced earlier this month that their updated Street View app for Android—as an Apple user I had no idea that Street View was a separate app on Android—now supports user-contributed photos to Street View. “After you record your images and publish them via the Street View app, we automatically rotate, position and create a series of connected photos. We then place those connected images in the right place on Google Maps, so your new Street View can be found in the exact location where it was taken for others to see and explore.” The idea is to supplement Google’s imagery where it’s thin on the ground. This beta feature requires an ARCore-compatible Android device and is only available in a few areas for now: Toronto, New York, and Austin TX (presumably for testing purposes), as well as Costa Rica, Indonesia and Nigeria.
Google Removing Uluru Street View Images
Google has agreed to Parks Australia’s request that user photos taken from the summit of Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) be removed from Street View; climbing Uluru, which is owned by and sacred to the Pitjantjatjara people, has been prohibited since 2019. ABC Australia, CNN. As of this writing a couple of images are still visible. Aerial coverage is unaffected. [Boing Boing]
Google Maps and Privacy
Incognito mode for Google Maps, announced last May, is currently in testing. With the mode enabled, user activity isn’t saved to the user’s Google account. It was made available last week to beta testers using the preview version of the Google Maps Android app.
Meanwhile, Strange Maps looks at the curious lack of Google Street View in Germany and Austria, where privacy concerns are paramount.
Using Street View to Spot Gentrification
CBC News: “A group of researchers at the University of Ottawa is using Google Street View to spot instances of gentrification in the city’s neighbourhoods. […] The program looks for patterns of improvements on individual properties, such as new fences, landscaping, siding or significant renovations.” Honestly not something for which I expected Street View to have a use.
Where Apple Maps and Google Street View Will Be Driving (or Walking) Next
Apple now has a fleet of cars collecting data for Apple Maps. Since they’ve been making a point about consumer privacy lately, this page lists where their cars are going to be in the coming weeks. (AppleInsider notes that some of that data collection is pedestrian-based.) It turns out Google has a page for Street View data collection that includes similar information, though it’s far less granular: windows of several months, whereas Apple tells you where it’ll be within a two-week timeframe.
A Google Maps Roundup
We’re almost at the end of the week of Mario on Google Maps. Announced for March 10 (“MAR10” Day), the temporary feature changed the navigator arrow into Mario driving his cart. Announced for both Android and iOS, but for some reason it never turned up in Google Maps on either my iPhone or my iPad, so I didn’t rush to post. [Business Insider]
Something that is turning up on my iPhone: plus codes, which appear to be Google’s homegrown solution to location codes, map codes and the like: a short string of characters that indicate a specific location on the globe. They were announced back in August 2015, but last month Geospatial World made note of their rollout.
Public transit navigation now includes wheelchair accessible routes, as of yesterday: “this feature is rolling out in major metropolitan transit centers around the world, starting with London, New York, Tokyo, Mexico City, Boston, and Sydney. We’re looking forward to working with additional transit agencies in the coming months to bring more wheelchair accessible routes to Google Maps.”
Slashgear looks at the new Google Maps APIs for gaming, which, I guess, enable developers to build real-world games on top of Google Maps. Note that Pokémon Go is not built on Google Maps: I suspect this outcome means that Google has noticed that.
Inevitable, and surprisingly not before now: Disney’s parks in Street View.
Google’s Map Data Alchemy
Justin O’Beirne’s lengthy analyses of Google Maps and Apple Maps are always worth reading,1 and his latest is no exception. Looking at the rapid proliferation of buildings, areas of interest and other examples of Google’s Ground Truthing program, Justin discovers that Google’s buildings data are a product of its satellite imagery, its places of interest are a product of its Street View data, and its areas of interest (the orange-shaded areas that indicate business districts) are the result of combining those stores of data.
…so this makes AOIs a byproduct of byproducts[.]
This is bonkers, isn’t it?
Google is creating data out of data.
This is slightly more than Google’s competitors are able to match. As always, Justin’s analysis is worth reading in full, and comes complete with before/after animations that make his point visually clear.
Street View Car Gets Disrespected by the Bing
What happens when a Google Street View car meets its Bing equivalent? The Verge explains: “As it turns out, when two Google Street View and Bing cars pass each other, only one (in this case Google) will admit to it publicly. Like an embarrassed or jilted lover, Microsoft masks the memory of the Google encounter with a giant white rectangle in Bing maps. […] Google however, proudly shows off the Bing car in all its glory.”