Google enhances Maps by adding ‘Street View’ feature

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Complimenting its popular mapping technology, Web search giant Google Inc. on Tuesday launched "Street View", a new Google Map service that provides users a street-level picture of downtown areas of various U.S. cities.

With the new "Street View" feature in Google Maps, users will be able to view and navigate with a 360-degree view of the selected cities, including San Francisco area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami.

While introducing the Street View at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference 2007 in San Jose, Google claimed that the new feature places Google Map users at the road level, offering them a deeper and more detailed experience of the location than aerial images provide.

"With Street View users can virtually walk the streets of a city, check out a restaurant before arriving, and even zoom in on bus stops and street signs to make travel plans," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps.

Initially pitched for selected cities, the street level imagery will soon be available for other metropolitan regions, Google said in a statement.

Early last month, the Mountain View, California based online advertising and internet search giant launched ‘My Maps’, another Google Map service that lets users to create customized maps with specific locations and picture. According to Google, this new mapping tool that can be found in a tab on the left side of the map interface allows users create their own maps to destinations, throwing in their own text, photos and videos for others to see. It even enables non-technical users easily annotate and share maps.

Google’s street-level viewing features are not new as Amazon.com Inc.’s A9.com already has showed street-level views of roughly two dozen major U.S. cities through its BlockView mapping service, which was launched in early 2005. However, it discontinued the feature last year in September.

Google on Tuesday also announced the launch of a tool for independent software developers to build mini-applications that can be displayed within Google Maps. Called Mapplets, these gadget applications can display a range of information, from housing listings to crime data. Mapplets will be available in the Maps site for users to choose from and apply to their maps.

Mapplets, which currently is in preview mode, can be found in a special version of Google Maps for users who want to try them out.

The same day, Microsoft has announced that its Microsoft Live Search Maps service will expand to include more cities worldwide by the end of summer. The world's leading software-producing company last year in November announced the launch of its new mapping service, 'Virtual Earth 3-D' to further add to the services being offered on its Live Search.

Microsoft initially included three-dimensional tours of 15 US cities, including San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth.

Now, Microsoft has enhanced its Live Search Map service by adding 3D cityscapes of U.S. cities Austin, Texas; Cape Coral, Florida; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Savannah, Georgia; and Tampa, Florida. Northampton, England, and Ottawa, Canada, also will be featured as 3D cityscapes via this service.

The 3-D feature lets users zoom in and out of these urban areas and get a three-dimensional view of buildings, terrain, and the like.

Until now, the earth was flat for us, but websites such as Google Earth have given us a bird's eye view of the world. Google’s popular Earth software allows a third of the world’s population obtain aerial views of their homes and neighborhoods. The largest search engine on the Web, Google has distributed more than 100 million free copies of Earth since June 2005.

Google Maps software is tied to search engine giant's online service and informs users about traffic conditions in 30 U.S. cities, provides driving directions, movable/scalable maps, and local search results for business locations as well as satellite and aerial views.

Google Maps is currently the third-most popular map site after Time Warner Inc.'s AOL online business’s Mapquest and Yahoo Maps, which already offer similar function.