Google Street View
Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include all of the country's major and minor cities, as well as the cities and rural areas of many other countries worldwide. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as clickable blue lines on Google Maps.
"Street View" redirects here. For services other than Google's, see List of street view services.Google Street View displays interactively panoramas of stitched VR photographs. Most photography is done by car, but some is done by tricycle, camel, boat, snowmobile, underwater apparatus, and on foot.
Street View imagery has come from several generations of camera systems from Immersive Media Company,[37] Point Grey Research (now FLIR Systems),[38] and in-house.[39] The cameras contain no mechanical parts, including the shutter; instead, they used CMOS sensors and an electronic rolling shutter. Widely deployed versions are:
Data-recording equipment is usually mounted on the roof of a car. A trike (tricycle) was developed to record pedestrian routes, including Stonehenge and other UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In 2010, a snowmobile-based system captured the 2010 Winter Olympics sites.[39] Shopping trolleys have also been used to shoot the insides of museums, and in Venice, the narrow roads were photographed with backpack-mounted cameras, and canals were photographed from boats.[43] A portable backpack-mounted Google Trekker is used in outdoor terrain. For instance, the six main paths up Snowdon, United Kingdom, were mapped by the Google Trekker in 2015.[44]
In 2017, Google used eight 20-megapixel cameras. Two cameras were facing left and right to read street signs and business names.[45] Laser range scanners from Sick AG for measuring up to 50 meters at 180° in the front of the vehicle[46] are used for recording the actual dimensions of the space being photographed. LIDAR scanners from Velodyne were added in the 2017 update. It is mounted at 45° to capture three-dimensional depth information and positional information.[45] Accurate positioning was done via a Global Positioning System, a wheel speed sensor, and inertial navigation sensor data.[39]
In September 2018, Google announced it would integrate air quality sensors from Aclima into its global fleet of Street View vehicles.[47]
Google Street View will blur content for any user who makes a request, in addition to the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates.[48] Privacy advocates have objected to Google Street View, pointing to views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, and people engaging in activities visible from public property that they do not wish to be seen publicly.[49] Another concern is the height of the cameras, and in at least two countries, Japan[50] and Switzerland,[51] Google has had to lower the height of its cameras so as to not peer over fences and hedges. The service also allows users to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove.[52] On the other side of the blurring issue are those who wish their home or property to be unblurred. As of 2023, there is no process to have an image or object in Street View unblurred.[53]
Police Scotland received an apology for wasting police time in 2014 from a local business owner in Edinburgh who, in 2012, staged a fake murder for the Google camera car by lying in the road "while his colleague stood over him with a pickaxe handle".[54] In May 2010, it was revealed that Google had collected and stored payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi connections as part of Street View.[55][56]
The concerns have led to Google not providing or suspending the service in countries around the world.
Third-party use of images
Imagery obtained from Google Street View has been used for research purposes, e.g., quantifying greenery, health studies, and assessing cycling conditions.[66][67]
Fine-art photographers have selected images for use in their own work.[68] The images have been published in book form and exhibited in art galleries, such as the work of Jon Rafman at the Saatchi Gallery, London.[69] Rafman sees images that evoke the "gritty urban life" depicted in American street photography and the images commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. He was inspired by the aesthetic of Henri Cartier-Bresson.[70]
Michael Wolf won an honourable mention in Daily Life in the 2011 World Press Photo competition for some of his work using Google Street View.[71] Mishka Henner was shortlisted for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in November 2012 for his series 'No Man's Land', which depicts sex workers at rural roadside locations.[72] Canadian artist Sylvia Grace Borda worked in conjunction with John M. Lynch between 2013 and 2014[73][74] to insert the first staged tableaux[75] into the Google Street View engine. It won them the Lumen Prize in 2016.[76] Borda has independently continued to author the Google Street View engine, and in 2017, she created the tableaux series the Kissing Project.[77]
Swedish programmer Anton Wallén developed a game called GeoGuessr, which places players in a Google Street View and has them guess its location.[78] In 2022, competitive players went viral, prompting a New York Times feature on top players.[79]
The cameras of this Google Street View car are mounted on the roof rack. The power and data cables are fed into the car through the right rear passenger window.
A Google Street View car in Japan
Google Street View camera mounted on a "trike" is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
