You can travel many parts of the world virtually without leaving your home thanks to the magic of Street View, included with Google Maps and Google Earth. The service allows you to check out the places you want to visit during your next vacation or business trip before you get there as if you were walking around them yourself, making it tremendously easier to plan out routes before you go.

While Street View isn’t available in every region in the world, one country sticks out like a particular oddball—Germany. The Central European country’s Street View imagery dates back to 2008 through 2010, and it still hasn’t been updated to this date. As a German, this irks me to no end, but things might soon be changing thanks to another player entering the market. Apple Maps has just started offering its version of Street View in Munich, Look Around, and the experience is just so much better than what Google has to offer.

Why Street View is hopelessly outdated in Germany

Before we dive into what could happen, we first need to explore what went wrong. When Google launched Street View in 2007, it was only available in limited US cities before expanding to almost every conceivable backwater in many countries around the world. Along the way, the service was met with differing degrees of privacy concerns and issues, prompting Google to introduce automated face and license plate blurring algorithms.

However, things didn’t go far enough for the German privacy regulation body, and there is a general historical distrust in Germany when it comes to offering private data. Thus, the company was forced to offer a tool that allowed people to blur their houses, with raw images deleted from Google’s servers. It turned out that German citizens were very eager to protect their oh-so-private house fronts, with over 200,000 requests reaching Google before it even launched the service in the 20 biggest cities of the country. Google’s automated tools weren't good enough to implement many of the requests, so the company had to resort to manually blur buildings that were left exposed erroneously, forcing it to hire 200 additional workers.

Google Street View Berlin central station anim

Where did the tram station at the Berlin central station go?

Following this debacle and hours upon hours of extra work put into getting Street View up to snuff in Germany, it would seem that Google didn’t find it feasible to expand Street View in the country following the initial pushback. The company has visited Germany again with its iconic Street View cars since then, but only in order to improve Maps' accuracy and to lay groundwork for testing self-driving vehicles.

This leaves all major cities in the country accessible on Street View, but with hopelessly outdated imagery. While you may not think that too much has changed in these cities over the course of just one decade, there are actually a lot of both subtle and not-so-subtle changes that add up. Street View is really only good as a time machine in many places, and it won’t help you navigate the streets of the cities at all. Looking at a city like Berlin makes this abundantly clear, with many remodeled streets, newly added biking paths and tram lines, and even some new sightseeing destinations that didn’t exist before, like the controversial Humboldt Forum.

Enter Apple Maps

While Google hasn’t done much to change the status quo in Germany, a few other companies tried to make up for Street View’s sorry state. Bing Maps and HERE both offer Street View-like imagery of their own, but neither makes it easy to access these images, with no obvious shortcuts within their services.

It seems like Apple has set out to change all that. The company launched a number of updates to its own Maps service this month, including “completely new maps for Germany.” As part of the update, the company is providing more 3D maps, improved pedestrian routes, and—you guessed it—Look Around, its take on Street View. It’s initially only available for Munich, but more cities are supposed to be joining it.

Apple says that it worked closely with the Bavarian privacy agency to ensure that all regional privacy laws and protocols are followed. The company claims that it made sure to make any identifiable information unrecognizable. Judging by an Apple list, the company is currently taking images and mapping cities all over the country, making clear that this likely isn't just a one-time exemption for Munich, but a wider nation-wide effort.

Apple Maps Look Around Maxmonument Munich anim

I have to admit I don't know my way around Munich much, but still, here's an up-to-date look at the Maxmonument.

While Apple is already happily taking and publishing Look Around imagery, Google has been working on a comeback, too. A 2019 Welt am Sonntag report details that the company might soon no longer be required to offer citizens the option to pixelate their houses due to the infamous GDPR law, which could make the process of creating Street View imagery in Germany so much easier. Interestingly enough, Apple does offer the option to blur and delete imagery in Germany.

With one of the biggest Google competitors now offering its version of Street View in the country, it's hopefully just a question of time until Google speeds up the process of returning to the country in full force, after these initial talks three years ago. International tourists and other travelers will thank them for it, and I assume that the silent majority in Germany will also be happy to see Street View return with recent images. Public streets are by definition not exactly a private matter, after all.

Another German-speaking country has already proven that it's possible to overcome this resistance. Austria used to be a similarly empty spot on the Street View map just a few years ago, but in 2017, Google returned and mapped out many parts of the country. In Austria, restrictions dating back to 2010 hindered the company from making Street View imagery feasible until privacy regulators and Google could finally find a new compromise all these years later. We can only hope that Germany is in for a similar treatment.

I, for one, am looking forward to being able to see up-to-date Street View imagery whenever I'm planning out trips in my home country, whether I have to resort to using Apple Maps on my MacBook or not—even if I'd love to just stick with Google Maps on my Pixel 6.