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If you've encountered a Street View car in real life, there's a chance you made a silly face while it drove past you, hoping you'll be featured on Google Maps. Or maybe you turned away from it and tried to avoid it completely. Depending on how much you value your privacy, you may be uncomfortable with people being able to recognize you while using Street View, even if your face is blurred. The same might apply to your house being publicly visible on the web, as Google's cars automatically take pictures to feed its service.
Google Maps tips and tricks: 10 things you need to try now
So much more than just driving directions
If you wanted to go somewhere new before the invention of GPS apps, you had to unfold a large sheet of paper covered with names and symbols; then, after you found your way, you either wrote down your intended path on paper or committed your route to memory. Today, we have Google Maps (and phones you can unfold!), which helps a billion people a month find out where they are and gets them where they want to go.
Google Maps Street View now lets you travel back in time on your phone
Historical Street View is available on Android for the first time
Google Street View is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week, which means new features. The company has unveiled news that Android and iOS devices will allow you to look back over previous Street View data to see what a location used to look like. It's called Historical Street View, and it uses Google's wealth of 360-degree photos that it has built up over the last 15 years to give you a glimpse of the recent past.
Split-screen Street View finally arrives on Google Maps for Android (APK Download)
You can actually see where you're going now
In the past, if I needed to use Street View, I usually tried to hop on my desktop. While the Street View function in Android's Google Maps did work, it would often be confusing to use, simply because I couldn't see where I was going. Google has finally added a split-view mode for Street View on Android, making the feature a lot easier to use.
Google now lets everyone contribute to Street View imagery
Limited to a few locations for now, but expanding later
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Street View is one of the most useful features that Google created to help people navigate via Search and Maps, and now its availability is about to rise dramatically. Google has announced that it's allowing you to help capture Street View data without a special 360° camera. The beta is limited to a few locations in the beginning, but if everything goes well, many more places might soon be explorable through user imagery.
Google Maps Street View getting AR-style markers for points of interest
Letting you discover local businesses while browsing the world first-person
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Google Maps is far more than a tool we use just for finding our way around, and there's a huge discovery component to it as well — who hasn't scrolled around Maps looking for a new restaurant to try out? And while the standard overhead view is plenty useful, sometimes you want to really immerse yourself in a place with a first-person Street View experience. So far, though, navigating Maps in Street View has come at a price, as you wouldn't see those discoverable markers for businesses and points of interest. Now that's finally changing, as Google deploys an AR-style overlay that bring place markers to Street View.
Google Maps' Street View is the best in the biz, and although it's been available on Android for years, it was never as well-integrated in the app as it's been on desktop. That's changing now, though — Google has just added a "Street View" layer in the Maps app that makes using the feature a lot easier.
Google has spent years cruising down roads to gather data for Street View, but it isn't just after photographic data. The Street View cars also collect information about local WiFi networks, and a 2010 lawsuit alleged Google grabbed too much data. After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, Google is putting this issue to rest by paying a mere $13 million. That's a pittance compared to the billions in damages many observers predicted years ago.
Unless you've been living under a rock in recent weeks, you may have heard about some soccer thing that's happening soon (football, to those of us this side of the Atlantic). The 2018 FIFA World Cup is almost upon us, and Google has some tricks up its sleeve to assist fans around the globe. As the tournament kicks off with Russia vs Saudi Arabia next Thursday, new features in the Google app will help you keep up with all the action. Other Google products will also be on hand to improve the experience, including Assistant, News, Trends, and Maps.
You know what's fun? Going to a Disney theme park. You know what's even more fun? Being paid to go to a Disney theme park. That's what a few lucky Google employees got to do, because the company announced today that eleven Disney parks have been mapped on Street View. This includes Walt Disney World, California Adventures, Disneyland Paris, and others.
Google's Street View has become ubiquitous. It's one of the pioneering features of Google Maps, and it has become such an integrated part of our modern lives that we might take it for granted. Not long ago, looking around from an arbitrary point on a map would have sounded like science fiction, but today that's just another way to see where something is. Now Google's making that experience even better, by improving how Street View stitches together its elaborate 360-degree panorama images.
Earlier in the year, Google announced that it would be working with hardware partners to launch Street View ready cameras that anyone could buy. There were four different types of cameras mentioned: mobile, auto, VR, and workflow. Thanks to Insta360, it's now possible to get your hands on the very first Street View auto ready camera.
Eight years ago, Circuit City closed its remaining stores, Michael Jackson died, and Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. Eight years ago was also the last time Google's Street View cameras got a major upgrade. According to Wired, the company has started rolling out updated cameras to its fleet of picture-snapping cars.
Many people's lifelong dreams include visiting outer space. While it's probable that the vast majority of people won't get to visit space, at least in this lifetime, space can still be experienced via the wonders of the Internet. Case in point: the International Space Station can now be explored in Google Maps' Street View.
It's hard to believe, but Google's Street View is officially 10 years old. What started out as a goofy little side project (like many of Google's most interesting products) has now managed to image numerous countries in every continent on the planet. The Google Maps add-on has even managed to gain a new lease of life with respect to virtual reality, and has proven popular as an educational tool taking learners all around the world on tours to places they might never get to see with their own eyes.
Has it ever annoyed you how outdated Street View is where you live? Is that garish new shopping mall still a pile of rubble left over from the beautiful period building that stood before it? Or did you want to do more than just take photographs of that exotic market you walked around on your last trip? Now you can take matters into your own hands and create your own space with a "Street View ready" 360 camera.
There's a new Harry Potter spinoff hitting movie theaters soon, in case you haven't turned on a television, surfed the web, or looked at a billboard in the last few months. And because Warner Bros. isn't interested in making a new movie without the potential for yet another billion-dollar set of sequels, they're pulling out all of the stops for the marketing for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. That includes some new Easter eggs (do wizards celebrate Easter? Maybe chocolate frogs or something) in Google Search, Maps, and the upcoming Daydream VR platform.